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Suggesting that there can be 62 seconds in a minute?
Suggesting that there can be 62 seconds in a minute? Q: Why can tm_sec in the tm structure range from 0 to 61, suggesting that there can be 62 seconds in a minute? A: That's actually a buglet in the Standard. There can be 61 seconds in a minute during a leap second. It's possible for there to be two...
2015-01-05, 1629👍, 0💬

Why does everyone say not to use scanf? What should I use instead?
Why does everyone say not to use scanf? What should I use instead? scanf has a number of problems, its %s format has the same problem that gets() has --it's hard to guarantee that the receiving buffer won't overflow. More generally, scanf is designed for relatively structured, formatted input (its n...
2015-10-21, 1628👍, 0💬

How can I write a function which takes a variable number of arguments
How can I write a function which takes a variable number of arguments and passes them to some other function (which takes a variable number of arguments)? In general, you cannot. Ideally, you should provide a version of that other function which accepts a va_list pointer. Suppose you want to write a...
2015-06-05, 1628👍, 0💬

Can I use base-2 constants (something like 0b101010)? Is there a printf format for binary?
Can I use base-2 constants (something like 0b101010)? Is there a printf format for binary? No, on both counts, although there are various preprocessor tricks you can try. You can convert base-2 string representations to integers with strtol. If you need to print numbers out in base 2, .
2015-02-13, 1626👍, 0💬

Does C have circular shift operators?
Does C have circular shift operators? No. (Part of the reason why is that the sizes of C's types aren't precisely defined----but a circular shift makes most sense when applied to a word of a particular known size.) You can implement a circular shift using two regular shifts and a bitwise OR: (x &...
2015-01-28, 1626👍, 0💬

What is the right way to use errno?
What is the right way to use errno? In general, you should detect errors by checking return values, and use errno only to distinguish among the various causes of an error, such as ``File not found'' or ``Permission denied''. (Typically, you use perror or strerror to print these discriminating error ...
2015-02-23, 1624👍, 0💬

How can I call system when parameters (filenames, etc.) of the executed command arent known until run time?
How can I call system when parameters (filenames, etc.) of the executed command arent known until run time? Just use sprintf (or perhaps strcpy and strcat) to build the command string in a buffer, then call system with that buffer. (Make sure the buffer is allocated with enough space; Here is a cont...
2015-03-18, 1622👍, 0💬

Can you mix old-style and new-style function syntax?
Can you mix old-style and new-style function syntax? Doing so is legal (and can be useful for backwards compatibility), but requires a certain amount of care . Modern practice, however, is to use the prototyped form in both declarations and definitions. (The old-style syntax is marked as obsolescent...
2016-01-13, 1618👍, 0💬

I am having trouble with a Turbo C program which crashes
I'm having trouble with a Turbo C program which crashes and says something like ``floating point formats not linked.'' Some compilers for small machines, including Turbo C (and Ritchie's original PDP-11 compiler), leave out certain floating point support if it looks like it will not be needed. In pa...
2015-06-19, 1617👍, 0💬

I inherited some code which contains far too many ...
I inherited some code which contains far too many #ifdef's for my taste. How can I preprocess the code to leave only one conditional compilation set, without running it through the preprocessor and expanding all of the #include's and #define's as well? There are programs floating around called unifd...
2016-01-29, 1616👍, 0💬

People keep saying that the behavior of ...
People keep saying that the behavior of i = i++ is undefined, but I just tried it on an ANSI-conforming compiler, and got the results I expected. A compiler may do anything it likes when faced with undefined behavior (and, within limits, with implementation-defined and unspecified behavior), includi...
2015-11-18, 1616👍, 0💬

How can I add N days to a date? How can I find the difference between two dates?
How can I add N days to a date? How can I find the difference between two dates? The ANSI/ISO Standard C mktime and difftime functions provide some (limited) support for both problems. mktime accepts non-normalized dates, so it is straightforward to take a filled-in struct tm, add or subtract from t...
2015-08-05, 1616👍, 0💬

I a'm getting strange syntax errors inside lines I have ifdeffed out.
I a'm 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 ...
2016-01-29, 1615👍, 0💬

How can I find the day of the week given the date?
How can I find the day of the week given the date? Here are three methods: 1. Use mktime or localtime # . Here is a code fragment which computes the day of the week for February 29, 2000: #include &lt;stdio.h> #include &lt;time.h> char *wday[] = {"Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "...
2015-01-07, 1615👍, 0💬

There seem to be a few missing operators ..
There seem to be a few missing operators, like ^^, &amp;&amp;=, and -&gt;=. A:A logical exclusive-or operator (hypothetically ``^^'') would be nice, but it couldn't possibly have short-circuiting behavior analogous to &amp;&amp; and || Similarly, it's not clear how short-circuiti...
2015-01-28, 1614👍, 0💬

What is the difference between ...
What's the difference between const MAXSIZE = 100; and #define MAXSIZE 100 A preprocessor #define gives you a true compile-time constant. In C, const gives you a run-time object which you're not supposed to try to modify; ``const'' really means ``readonly''.
2016-02-18, 1613👍, 0💬

If the assignment operator were ...
If the assignment operator were :=, wouldn't it then be harder to accidentally write things like if(a = b) ? A: Yes, but it would also be just a little bit more cumbersome to type all of the assignment statements which a typical program contains. In any case, it's really too late to be worrying abou...
2015-01-26, 1613👍, 0💬

How can I sort a linked list?
How can I sort a linked list? Sometimes it's easier to keep the list in order as you build it (or perhaps to use a tree instead). Algorithms like insertion sort and merge sort lend themselves ideally to use with linked lists. If you want to use a standard library function, you can allocate a tempora...
2015-08-10, 1612👍, 0💬

I am reading strings typed by the user into an array ...
I'm reading strings typed by the user into an array, and then printing them out later. When the user types a sequence like \n, why isn't it being handled properly? Character sequences like \n are interpreted at compile time. When a backslash and an adjacent n appear in a character constant or string...
2016-03-04, 1610👍, 0💬

Why isnt any of this standardized in C? Any real program has to do some of these things.
Why isnt any of this standardized in C? Any real program has to do some of these things. Actually, some standardization has occurred along the way. In the beginning, C did not have a standard library at all; programmers always had to ``roll their own'' utility routines. After several abortive attemp...
2015-02-27, 1610👍, 0💬

What's the difference between using a typedef or a define for a user-defined type?
What's the difference between using a typedef or a define for a user-defined type? In general, typedefs are preferred, in part because they can correctly encode pointer types. For example, consider these declarations: typedef char *String_t; #define String_d char * String_t s1, s2; String_d s3, s4; ...
2016-02-22, 1609👍, 0💬

I am still getting errors due to library functions being undefined
I'm still getting errors due to library functions being undefined, even though I'm explicitly requesting the right libraries while linking. Many linkers make one pass over the list of object files and libraries you specify, and extract from libraries only those modules which satisfy references which...
2015-07-14, 1609👍, 0💬

This program runs perfectly on one machine ...
This program runs perfectly on one machine, but I get weird results on another. Stranger still, adding or removing a debugging printout changes the symptoms... Lots of things could be going wrong; here are a few of the more common things to check: * uninitialized local variables integer overflow, es...
2015-05-27, 1609👍, 0💬

I heard that you have to include ......
I heard that you have to #include before calling printf. Why? So that a proper prototype for printf will be in scope. A compiler may use a different calling sequence for functions which accept variable-length argument lists. (It might do so if calls using variable-length argument lists were less eff...
2016-01-08, 1607👍, 0💬

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