C is a better language than any language you care to name.

[Colborne_Greg]

Interesting that your signature is "You'll never get very far if all you do is follow the instructions" fitting for this tread isn't it

[jschell]

Joe Woodbury wrote:

You are arguing against something I never said.

My bad - you are correct.

[jschell]

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

A language is defined by its compiler (not the other way around).

No. Compiler theory is a very complete area of study in computer science and most perhaps all successful languages build upon that. And within compiler theory the compiler is an implementation, nothing more. And in terms of C, although perhaps not specifically this discussion, there are many ambiguities which the compiler is allowed to define but others which it is not.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

I like the C pre-processor; it's really just a text processing utility -- it can be used for purposes other than its primary usage

With something like 20 years of C/C++ experience I am pretty comfortable with what the language is and isn't.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

and that is quite true,

As I said.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Soooo... if Microsoft says that VB is the World's Greatest Language....

Well first I was noting a technical point not a subjective one. Second K&R when it was written was written in a different style than VB, so even if the author(s) of VB made a technical point then I would be less inclined to accept it (which is true of C# and Java as well.)

[Br Bill]

Oh, there are better languages. I just don't care to name them. ;) I care about so few things.

[Stefan_Lang]

You've completely missed my point. My sig should have made it obvious I abhor the use of goto. I merely pointed out a possible reason why case may have been specified the way it is. Not that I wouldn't like to ban goto from the language entirely. And not that I would miss the switch statement for that matter (not much anyway). It was just a statement about the consistency of the language as a whole. As for your love of Basic - to each their own. It certainly has it's use for certain kind of applications. Me, I've been working on processing-intensive applications for decades, and no Basic dialect whatsoever, not even the compiled ones, would ever have served the purpose. That said, I'll remove the link from my sig: as you've pointed out, the main reason for the problem isn't so much the use of goto - it is the fact that braces (or other block markers) are only optional after control statements, combined with an unlucky duplicate line of code - that this line contains a goto command is just happenstance, many other commands would have caused havoc as well. On a sidenote:

Colborne_Greg wrote:

Visual basic .net is C with English words and no bracket issue, the GOTO fail would never had been an issue in VB.

Which part of go to isn't english? Just wondering...

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

[Stefan_Lang]

My point was that a series of case statements resembles a series of goto jump labels, and therefore there is an expectation for the flow of execution to continue, even past the next 'label'. The break command isn't associated to the case statement, it is associated to the switch block.

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)

[PIEBALDconsult]

Stefan_Lang wrote:

resembles a series goto

Not to me it doesn't.

You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

[Kenneth Kasajian]

I think I may not have been clear in my point because I don't understand what you're asking me. I'm not saying Pascal is better than C or the other way around. I'm saying Pascal is a language that was not originally written in C. It was written in Fortran, after which it was bootstrapped to be written in itself.

ken@kasajian.com / www.kasajian.com

[Kenneth Kasajian]

Also to answer the more specific question, I don't think the language has anything to do with 64K limits, for strings, or otherwise. Those are all implementation details of specific compilers.

ken@kasajian.com / www.kasajian.com

[PIEBALDconsult]

It sure looks like you are proposing that Pascal is a better language than C, based on certain criteria. Pascal is indeed a very good language and I really liked it when I was using it in college, but I haven't used it since, and I can't even read/understand the code I have from that period.

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

Pascal is a language that was not originally written in C

Nor was C.

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

after which it was bootstrapped to be written in itself

As was C.

You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

[PIEBALDconsult]

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

implementation details of specific compilers

That may well be, but is it not part of the Pascal language spec that a string is limited to 255 characters because the length is stored in the first byte of the string? I suppose not every implementation uses 8-bit characters, but it still imposes a definite limitation other than "available system resources".

You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

[Kenneth Kasajian]

No, you have completely missed the point of my message. Go back and re-read it. What I am saying is that, a lot of people bash C but those same people don't realize that whatever language they prefer is probably written in C. So I challenged the readers to name a language that was not written in C.. because it's hard to do. Most new languages, VB, JavaScript, Python, Ruby all written in C. However, there are languages not originally written in C, although they are old. Pascal is one, which is the one I mentioned to get the ball rolling. You're being unnecessarily antagonistic without understanding, or taking the time to read, what I'm saying. I suggest you drop it.

ken@kasajian.com / www.kasajian.com

[Kenneth Kasajian]

Okay, although it's true that one can implement Pascal differently, you're right that it's limited to 64K (or 32K) in length for strings. But I really don't think that's a good example of Pascal's inferiority over C. There's advantages to counted-strings, and I've worked in environments where actually simulated Pascal strings in C for efficiency (i.e. you can easily get to the length). COM BSTRs use a similar structure, but store 32-bit lengths. And the reason I don't think it's a limitation is because if you needed a string that long, C's null-terminated string is hardly preferable. You likely need a different data-structure (rope, array of strings) to do whatever you're doing anyway. Or, more likely, it's that big, it's probably a memory buffer that you'd manage using address and count. As a reminder, my initial post was not stating Pascal is better than C. It was to point out that many of today's languages are written in C.

ken@kasajian.com / www.kasajian.com

[PIEBALDconsult]

Sooo... your post is totally unrelated to Chris' prompt for discussion of languages that are or are not better than C. OK.

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

Go back and re-read it

I have read it many times, always in the context of the thread.

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

a lot of people bash C but those same people don't realize that whatever language they prefer is probably written in C

So what?

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

I challenged the readers to name a language that was not written in C

You could have made that clearer.

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

not originally written in C ... Pascal is one

Pascal pre-dates C slightly, it certainly pre-dates C's popularity. COBOL, Fortran, and BASIC also pre-date C.

You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

[PIEBALDconsult]

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

I don't think it's a limitation

Perhaps you just don't find the limit to be a hindrance. I never had any trouble with it either, but I never had to use Pascal to do real-world development. Just as .net strings are limited to 2GB -- it's a limit, but it hasn't yet been a hindrance.

Kenneth Kasajian wrote:

C's null-terminated string is hardly preferable

They certainly have some disadvantages, but at least they're easy to work around.

You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

[Colborne_Greg]

I programmed Unidex in visual basic, there isn't a conditional statement involved in retrieving a value from a serialized file (no sql) it can handle creating 8 million records an hour, and can read 2.3 billion records an hour.

[Stefan_Lang]

Because you chose to ignore the part that I specifically underlined. I didn't say goto, I said goto jump labels - that is a world of a difference! How is the following

switch(a) {
case 1:
...
case 2:
...
}

different from

on a goto label1, label2
label1:
...
label2:
...

? The multilabel on ... goto variant is present in many BASIC variants.

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)

[Stefan_Lang]

:zzz: You didn't get the point of anything I said. But nevermind. I've got it that you prefer VB from your first posting. That's fine. Have a nice day.

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)

[PIEBALDconsult]

Stefan_Lang wrote:

you chose to ignore

I didn't ignore it; the CP selection quoting doesn't like to select text with tags in it and I was too lazy to copy the other text into the quote. Like this:

switch(a)
{
case 1:
{
...
}

case 2:
{
...
}
}

Stefan_Lang wrote:

is present in many BASIC variants

C probably pre-dates them, so perhaps the designers of those variants got the idea from C :-D . When I learned BASIC we didn't have labels, only line numbers. ON a GOTO 100 , 200 Also, the lines/labels could be anywhere, not grouped together as with CASE statements. Ergo, to me a switch doesn't resemble an ON/GOTO at all. BASIC (1964) doesn't appear to have had ON/GOTO. BASICplus (that which I first learned on a PDP-11, and for which I have a book first published in 1976) has no labels and therefore ON/GOTO with line numbers only. Turbo BASIC (1987) has labels and therefore ON/GOTO with labels. In the late '80s I was using VAX BASIC and I don't recall it using labels, though it probably did. HPBASIC, the current version of VAX BASIC, does of course.

You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

[Al Chak]

There is no disscuss! C is not BETTER. It is just the ONE and the ONLY language for programming! rest languages are for job security.