(part 3) Dick Heathfield's book errors

[Nomen Nescio]

Hey, this is Ajun from a Bangladesh outsource company. Han
has hired me to do the English writing for his comp.lang.c
posts. The subject line has been changed, which may affect
archival consistency, so if you're looking for the first
two installments of this series, just run a Google Groups
search for "posible minour buggs in dick heathfields book".
Neither Han nor I expect to win a Pulitzer Prize anytime
soon, yet we believe we're in good company here on
comp.lang.c with folks like Nick Keighley and Eric Sosman.
(CLC literature would be as dry as the work of an MPD patient
whose first personality is an autistic savant and whose
second personality is an OCD case study. If you want a
sample, interleave the C99 standard with Kant's _Critique
of Pure Reason_, and then randomize the lines). From now on, the
first-person pronoun will have Han as its antecedent, and
we assure you this sentence will be the last one of ours
that sounds like the output of an academic having a wank.

My follow-up to part 2 didn't go through. I made a
retraction concerning the alleged security issue in the
_C Unleashed_ CGI library. Briefly, I'd been smoking too
much pot and erred in my evaluation of the fgets()
argument. At worst, the code contains dubious behavior,
not a security issue.

Anyway, I have today's corrections for Dick Heathfield's
book and expect to read the book in its entirety, doing
the code review that nobody else appears to have done. I
will skip anything contained in the _C Unleashed_ errata.
Unlike the members of the so-called "CLC Clique", I am a
fallible human being and am bound to be wrong at times.
I shall attempt to be right at least 51% of the time. So
far I think I'm batting at around 54%.

If you think I have an axe to grind, you're wrong -- what
I'm wielding is more of a chainsaw. The members of the CLC
Clique have hurt my feelings and damaged my self-esteem. I
was bullied at high school and lost hope in life... until
I discovered ANSI/ISO C. The language fused itself with
my ego structure and became a significant part of my identity.
So when Dick Heathfield and his ISO posse dissected my
code and nitpicked at every little detail, I felt as though
a sledgehammer had been taken to the very foundations of my
life.

OK, here are the errors for the day:

ERROR 1 (typographical)
=======================
pg. 397, Dick Heathfield's chapter

"To insert an item at the very end of the list, we need
only call DLGetNext()"

DLGetNext() should be DLGetLast().

ERROR 2 (technical)
===================
pg. 401, Dick Heathfield's chapter

DLInsertAfter() and DLInsertBefore() are NOT guaranteed
by C89/C90 to be distinct external identifiers, since
their first 6 characters are identical. You may think this
is a silly issue, but consider the bullshit nitpicking that
the CLC Clique heaps on more successful authors like Herb
Schildt and also on posters to this newsgroup.
A suitable defense to this error may be that the code
was written for C99-conforming implementations. That
raises some interesting questions concerning the whole
concept of portability.

ERROR 3 (technical)
===================
pg. 403, Dick Heathfield's chapter

do
{
Marker = Next; // !
DLDelete(Next);
Next = Marker;
} while (Next != NULL);

The statement indicated by the exclamation mark should be
Marker = Next->Next;
That's all for now, folks. I'm going to read all of this
book. You know what's funny? If you look at the errata,
you can see that members of the CLC Clique have, in true
style, pointed out errors such as those concerning subtle
alignment violations and so forth, ignoring errors that
are glaringly obvious to anyone who's taken a semester of
C programming. It's as if their focus is so far down the
sub-sub-sub-clause constraints of the ISO standard that
they're oblivious to the bigger picture. Indeed, the C99
standard is itself the result of micro-precise engineers,
autistic technical writers, and other pencil-necks banging
their heads together on a committee, missing the bigger
picture, which in this case is the portability nightmare
that the C99 standard contributes to even a decade after
its inception.

Yours,
Han from China

[Chris Dollin]

Nomen Nescio wrote:

Troll.

--
'Don't be afraid: /Electra City/
there will be minimal destruction.' - Panic Room

Hewlett-Packard Limited registered no:
registered office: Cain Road, Bracknell, Berks RG12 1HN 690597 England

[Phil Carmody]

Nomen Nescio <no****@dizum.comwrites:

Hey, this is Ajun from a Bangladesh outsource company. Han
has hired me to do the English writing for his comp.lang.c
posts.

Is it half term (or whatever you Americans call it) currently?

Phil
--
Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does
not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in God.
No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), American politician and scientist

[Richard Heathfield]

Chris Dollin said:

Nomen Nescio wrote:

Troll.

Gee, ya think? :-)

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

[Lorenzo Villari]

"Nomen Nescio" <no****@dizum.comha scritto nel messaggio
news:d3******************************@dizum.com...

their first 6 characters are identical. You may think this
is a silly issue, but consider the bullshit nitpicking that
the CLC Clique heaps on more successful authors like Herb
Schildt and also on posters to this newsgroup.

Oh no, not again...

[Andreas Eibach]

"Chris Dollin" <ch**********@hp.comwrote:

Nomen Nescio wrote:

Troll.

Well, I was going to say "I beg to differ", but after delving to the drawl,
this occurred to me:

| So when Dick Heathfield and his ISO posse dissected my
| code and nitpicked at every little detail, I felt as though
| a sledgehammer had been taken to the very foundations of my
| life.

LOL.-- So this is simply a kind of silly revenge campaign "You dissected my
code, now I will take a magnifying glass and find YOUR mistakes to show
you're not as 1337 4s y0u th1nk!"

-Andreas

[Jack Klein]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:00:05 +0100 (CET), Nomen Nescio
<no****@dizum.comwrote in comp.lang.c:

Hey, this is Ajun from a Bangladesh outsource company. Han

[snip]

If you think I have an axe to grind, you're wrong -- what
I'm wielding is more of a chainsaw. The members of the CLC
Clique have hurt my feelings and damaged my self-esteem. I
was bullied at high school and lost hope in life.

[snip]

Nobody deserves to be bullied, in high school or in CLC.

What you deserve is to be kill filed, you whiney, cowardly back biter.

Please go on to my chapter next, I won't see what you have to say.

*plonk*

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
FAQs for
comp.lang.c http://c-faq.com/
comp.lang.c++ http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++
http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/docs/FAQ-acllc.html

[Richard Heathfield]

Andreas Eibach said:

>
"Chris Dollin" <ch**********@hp.comwrote:

>Nomen Nescio wrote:

Troll.

Well, I was going to say "I beg to differ", but after delving to the
drawl, this occurred to me:

| So when Dick Heathfield and his ISO posse dissected my
| code and nitpicked at every little detail, I felt as though
| a sledgehammer had been taken to the very foundations of my
| life.

LOL.-- So this is simply a kind of silly revenge campaign "You dissected
my code, now I will take a magnifying glass and find YOUR mistakes to
show you're not as 1337 4s y0u th1nk!"

The effort, however, is wasted, since I already know I'm not as 1337 4s he
thinks I think.

Basically, what the OP is trying to say is "I am as good as you". But if he
genuinely believed that claim to be true, he wouldn't need to make it.

There are quite a few comp.lang.c regulars who know far more about C than I
do, and who are far better programmers than I am. But do they spend their
time picking holes in my code for the sake of it? By no means! And if they
do happen to spot a problem, they mention it not to score points off me
but to educate me and to help me to improve my knowledge of C, a service
for which I am most grateful. They *know* they're better at C than me (in
most cases, anyway) - so of course there is absolutely no need for them to
say so. It is obvious.

Code dissections can be a useful educational strategy, which is why they
are so often conducted in comp.lang.c - but their usefulness is
considerably hampered if they are written illiterately.

If the OP learns to write clear and polite English, I will gladly read what
he has to say.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

[Nick Keighley]

On 30 Oct, 13:14, Richard Heathfield <[e-mail]:

Andreas Eibach said:

"Chris Dollin" <[e-mail]:

Nomen Nescio wrote:

Troll.

Well, I was going to say "I beg to differ", but after delving to the
drawl, this occurred to me:

| So when Dick Heathfield and his ISO posse dissected my
| code and nitpicked at every little detail, I felt as though
| a sledgehammer had been taken to the very foundations of my
| life.

LOL.-- So this is simply a kind of silly revenge campaign "You dissected
my code, now I will take a magnifying glass and find YOUR mistakes to
show you're not as 1337 4s y0u th1nk!"

The effort, however, is wasted, since I already know I'm not as 1337 4s he
thinks I think.

Basically, what the OP is trying to say is "I am as good as you". But if he
genuinely believed that claim to be true, he wouldn't need to make it.

There are quite a few comp.lang.c regulars who know far more about C than I
do, and who are far better programmers than I am. But do they spend their
time picking holes in my code for the sake of it? By no means! And if they
do happen to spot a problem, they mention it not to score points off me
but to educate me and to help me to improve my knowledge of C, a service
for which I am most grateful.

I, on the other hand, only point out errors in your programs because
I
want to score points off you.

"Why do you like playing chess, Mr Fisher?"
"I like to destroy the other guy's ego"

:-)

They *know* they're better at C than me (in
most cases, anyway) - so of course there is absolutely no need for them to
say so. It is obvious.

Code dissections can be a useful educational strategy, which is why they
are so often conducted in comp.lang.c - but their usefulness is
considerably hampered if they are written illiterately.

(Proverbs 17:10) A rebuke works deeper in one having understanding
than striking a stupid one a hundred times.

Almost zen that one

If the OP learns to write clear and polite English, I will gladly read what
he has to say.

well, his english is getting better

--
Nick Keighley