Re: lcc first experience

In article
<c3cb0c48-bc72-4b53-af6b-c9b3223c5a79@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 <muntyan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>"Communicate" thing ends after first three lines of the "2+2=4"
>essay. The rest ten pages of stuff full of quotes from the C
>standard and anecdotes about I-wont-tell-name are what I call
>bull****, and what Jacob calls "playing with words".

Are we reading the same postings?? The closest thing I can find
to an anecdote in the message that Jacob was replying to was when
I wrote,

>>>Personally, I find it difficult to see how there could be a
"side-effect"
>>>associated with a statement that the C89 standard *specifically*
>>>says "performs no operations", but perhaps I'm just funny that way.

It isn't especially close to what one would normally consider an
"anecdote", but it was nearly the only place in the message that
was not direct quotation of or interpretation of the C89 standard.
(The other place in the message was the place where I said that
I would be prepared to accept for the purpose of discussion
that jump-statements have side-effects; that's even less of an
"anecdote", it seems to me, but if somehow my judgement is
very faulty today about what an anecdote is or is not, then perhaps
the latter is what you were referring to...)


Quotes from the C standard were necessary in order to communicate
with precision. A "statement" has a precise meaning in C, and
in order to answer the question of whether "statements" have side-effects
in C, we must deal with the details of what statements are.

Could I have given a simple counter-example? Not exactly -- though
I could have shown the derivation of just one counter-example and
that would have served as a counter-proof. But that would have left
open the possibility that I had happened to find a single loop-hole,
found the "only" statement in C that did not have side effects. To
my mind, that would have been enough to refute the original statement
but would have been too close to "playing with words", so instead
I showed that nearly all of the forms of C "statement" can
unquestionably exist in forms with no side-effects. The one form
in which it was questionable, I specifically noted as being a matter
of semantics and open to reasonable discussion.
-- 
  "The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and
  institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly
  afterwards."                                -- Walter Bagehot