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Why does the call char scanf work?
Why does the call char s[30]; scanf("%s", s); work? I thought you always needed an & on each variable passed to scanf. You always need a pointer; you don't necessarily need an explicit &amp;. When you pass an array to scanf, you do not need the &, because arrays are always passed to func...
2015-10-30, 1636👍, 0💬

I am including the right header file for the library function I am using, but the linker keeps saying its undefined.
I am including the right header file for the library function I am using, but the linker keeps saying its undefined. In the general case of calling code in an external library, using #include to pull in the right header file(s) is only half of the story; you also have to tell the linker to search th...
2016-02-10, 1635👍, 0💬

What is a good data structure to use for storing lines of text?
What's a good data structure to use for storing lines of text? I started to use fixed-size arrays of arrays of char, but they're just too restrictive. One good way of doing this is with a pointer (simulating an array) to a set of pointers (each simulating an array) of char. This data structure is so...
2015-02-25, 1635👍, 0💬

Does C have an equivalent to Pascals with statement?
Does C have an equivalent to Pascals with statement? No. The way in C to get quick and easy access to the fields of a structure is to declare a little local structure pointer variable (which, it must be admitted, is not quite as notationally convenient as a with statement and doesn't save quite as m...
2015-01-14, 1634👍, 0💬

How can I list all of the predefined identifiers?
How can I list all of the predefined identifiers? There's no standard way, although it is a common need. gcc provides a -dM option which works with -E, and other compilers may provide something similar. If the compiler documentation is unhelpful, the most expedient way is probably to extract printab...
2016-01-27, 1631👍, 0💬

What is the difference between const char .....
What's the difference between const char *p, char const *p, and char * const p? The first two are interchangeable; they declare a pointer to a constant character (you can't change any pointed-to characters). char * const p declares a constant pointer to a (variable) character (i.e. you can't change ...
2016-01-06, 1631👍, 0💬

How can I discover how many arguments a function was actually called with?
How can I discover how many arguments a function was actually called with? This information is not available to a portable program. Some old systems provided a nonstandard nargs function, but its use was always questionable, since it typically returned the number of words passed, not the number of a...
2015-06-10, 1631👍, 0💬

Why is my simple program, which hardly does more than print
Why is my simple program, which hardly does more than print ``Hello, world!'' in a window, compiling to such a huge executable (several hundred K)? Should I #include fewer header files? What you're seeing is the current (poor) state of the ``art'' in library design. As run-time libraries accrete mor...
2015-07-06, 1630👍, 0💬

I dont understand why I cant use const values in initializers ....
I don't understand why I can't use const values in initializers and array dimensions, as in const int n = 5; int a[n]; The const qualifier really means ``read-only''; an object so qualified is a run-time object which cannot (normally) be assigned to. The value of a const-qualified object is therefor...
2016-01-08, 1629👍, 0💬

Why cant I open a file by its explicit path?
Why can't I open a file by its explicit path? The call fopen("c:\newdir\file.dat", "r") is failing. The file you actually requested--with the characters \n and \f in its name--probably doesn't exist, and isn't what you thought you were trying to open. In character constants and string literals, the ...
2015-04-08, 1624👍, 0💬

What is assert and when would I use it?
What is assert and when would I use it? It is a macro, defined in &lt;assert.h>, for testing ``assertions''. An assertion essentially documents an assumption being made by the programmer, an assumption which, if violated, would indicate a serious programming error. For example, a function which ...
2015-01-12, 1624👍, 0💬

Why doesn't sizeof tell me the size of the block of memory pointed to by a pointer?
Why doesn't sizeof tell me the size of the block of memory pointed to by a pointer? sizeof tells you the size of the pointer. There is no portable way to find out the size of a malloc'ed block. (Remember, too, that sizeof operates at compile time
2016-03-21, 1623👍, 0💬

Why does the simple line-copying loop while ...
Why does the simple line-copying loop while(!feof(infp)) { fgets(buf, MAXLINE, infp); fputs(buf, outfp); } copy the last line twice? p> In C, end-of-file is only indicated after an input routine has tried to read, and failed. (In other words, C's I/O is not like Pascal's.) Usually, you should just c...
2015-11-13, 1623👍, 0💬

My ANSI compiler complains about a mismatch when it see
My ANSI compiler complains about a mismatch when it sees extern int func(float); int func(x) float x; { ... You have mixed the new-style prototype declaration ``extern int func(float);'' with the old-style definition ``int func(x) float x;''. It is usually possible to mix the two styles but not in t...
2016-01-13, 1621👍, 0💬

How can I recover the file name given an open stream or file descriptor?
How can I recover the file name given an open stream or file descriptor? This problem is, in general, insoluble. Under Unix, for instance, a scan of the entire disk (perhaps involving special permissions) would theoretically be required, and would fail if the descriptor were connected to a pipe or r...
2015-04-10, 1621👍, 0💬

Should I use symbolic names like TRUE and FALSE for Boolean constants, or plain 1 and 0?
Should I use symbolic names like TRUE and FALSE for Boolean constants, or plain 1 and 0? It's your choice. Preprocessor macros like TRUE and FALSE (and, of course, NULL) are used for code readability, not because the underlying values might ever change. It's a matter of style, not correctness, wheth...
2016-02-29, 1614👍, 0💬

fopen isnt letting me open files like "$HOME/.profile" and "~/.myrcfile".
fopen isn't letting me open files like "$HOME/.profile" and "~/.myrcfile". Under Unix, at least, environment variables like $HOME, along with the home-directory notation involving the ~ character, are expanded by the shell, and there's no mechanism to perform these expansions automatically when you ...
2015-04-06, 1614👍, 0💬

How can I find out how much memory is available?
How can I find out how much memory is available? Your operating system may provide a routine which returns this information, but it's quite system-dependent. (Also, the number may vary over time.) If you're trying to predict whether you'll be able to allocate a certain amount of memory, just try it-...
2015-03-30, 1614👍, 0💬

I am starting to think about multinational character sets ....
I'm starting to think about multinational character sets, and I'm worried about the implications of making sizeof(char) be 2 so that 16-bit character sets can be represented. If type char were made 16 bits, sizeof(char) would still be 1, and CHAR_BIT in &lt;limits.h> would be 16, and it would si...
2016-03-02, 1613👍, 0💬

Is there a way to switch on strings?
Is there a way to switch on strings? Not directly. Sometimes, it's appropriate to use a separate function to map strings to integer codes, and then switch on those: #define CODE_APPLE 1 #define CODE_ORANGE 2 #define CODE_NONE 0 switch(classifyfunc(string)) { case CODE_APPLE: ... case CODE_ORANGE: .....
2015-02-04, 1613👍, 0💬

What if a built-in logical or relational operator `returns something other than 1? ....
Isn't #defining TRUE to be 1 dangerous, since any nonzero value is considered ``true'' in C? What if a built-in logical or relational operator ``returns'' something other than 1? It is true (sic) that any nonzero value is considered true in C, but this applies only ``on input'', i.e. where a Boolean...
2016-02-29, 1612👍, 0💬

I am getting strange syntax errors inside lines I have ifdeffed out.
I am getting strange syntax errors inside lines I have ifdeffed out. Under ANSI C, the text inside a ``turned off'' #if, #ifdef, or #ifndef must still consist of ``valid preprocessing tokens.'' This means that the characters " and ' must each be paired just as in real C code, and the pairs mustn't c...
2015-12-14, 1612👍, 0💬

What is hashing?
What is hashing? Hashing is the process of mapping strings to integers, usually in a relatively small range. A ``hash function'' maps a string (or some other data structure) to a bounded number (the ``hash bucket'') which can more easily be used as an index in an array, or for performing repeated co...
2015-01-07, 1610👍, 0💬

I am appalled that the ANSI Standard leaves so many issues undefined ...
I'm appalled that the ANSI Standard leaves so many issues undefined. Isn't a Standard's whole job to standardize these things? It has always been a characteristic of C that certain constructs behaved in whatever way a particular compiler or a particular piece of hardware chose to implement them. Thi...
2015-11-18, 1607👍, 0💬

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