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How can I ensure that integer arithmetic doesnt overflow?
How can I ensure that integer arithmetic doesnt overflow? The usual approach is to test the operands against the limits in the header file &lt;limits.h> before doing the operation. For example, here is a ``careful'' addition function: int chkadd(int a, int b) { if(INT_MAX - b &lt; a) { fputs...
2015-03-04, 1587👍, 0💬

I have a simple little program that reads characters until EOF ...
I have a simple little program that reads characters until EOF, but how do I actually enter that ``EOF'' value from the keyboard? I see that EOF is defined by to be -1; am I supposed to enter -1? If you think about it, what you enter can't be -1, because ``-1'' is two characters, and getchar is read...
2015-11-16, 1586👍, 0💬

How do I get an accurate error status return from system on MS-DOS?
How do I get an accurate error status return from system on MS-DOS? You can't; COMMAND.COM doesn't tend to provide one. If you don't need COMMAND.COM's services (i.e. if you're just trying to invoke a simple program, without I/O redirection and such) try one of the spawn routines, instead.
2015-03-16, 1586👍, 0💬

How do I read the arrow keys? What about function keys?
How do I read the arrow keys? What about function keys? Terminfo, some versions of termcap, and some versions of curses have support for these non-ASCII keys. Typically, a special key sends a multicharacter sequence (usually beginning with ESC, '\033'); parsing these can be tricky. (curses will do t...
2015-04-24, 1585👍, 0💬

Is exit(status) truly equivalent to returning the same status from main?
Is exit(status) truly equivalent to returning the same status from main? Yes and no. The Standard says that a return from the initial call to main is equivalent to calling exit. However, a return from main cannot be expected to work if data local to main might be needed during cleanup; A few very ol...
2015-03-09, 1585👍, 0💬

What is alloca and why is its use discouraged?
What is alloca and why is its use discouraged? alloca allocates memory which is automatically freed when the function which called alloca returns. That is, memory allocated with alloca is local to a particular function's ``stack frame'' or context. alloca cannot be written portably, and is difficult...
2016-03-14, 1584👍, 0💬

I have got some code that is trying to unpack external structures
I've got some code that's trying to unpack external structures, but it's crashing with a message about an ``unaligned access.'' What does this mean? The code looks like this: struct mystruct { char c; long int i32; int i16; } s; char buf[7], *p; fread(buf, 7, 1, fp); p = buf; s.c = *p++; s.i32 = *(l...
2015-05-20, 1584👍, 0💬

Does C have anything like the `substr extract substrin routine present in other languages?
Does C have anything like the `substr extract substrin routine present in other languages? Not as such. To extract a substring of length LEN starting at index POS in a source string, use something like char dest[LEN+1]; strncpy(dest, &source[POS], LEN); dest[LEN] = '\0'; /* ensure \0 termination...
2016-03-07, 1582👍, 0💬

How can I write a function that takes a format string and a variable number of arguments
How can I write a function that takes a format string and a variable number of arguments, like printf, and passes them to printf to do most of the work? Use vprintf, vfprintf, or vsprintf. These routines are like their counterparts printf, fprintf, and sprintf, except that instead of a variable-leng...
2015-06-12, 1582👍, 0💬

This program crashes before it even runs!
This program crashes before it even runs! (When single-stepping with a debugger, it dies before the first statement in main.) You probably have one or more very large (kilobyte or more) local arrays. Many systems have fixed-size stacks, and even those which perform dynamic stack allocation automatic...
2015-05-29, 1581👍, 0💬

How can I call a function with an argument list built up at run time?
How can I call a function with an argument list built up at run time? There is no guaranteed or portable way to do this. Instead of an actual argument list, you might consider passing an array of generic (void *) pointers. The called function can then step through the array, much like main() might s...
2015-06-03, 1580👍, 0💬

How do I copy files?
How do I copy files? Either use system() to invoke your operating system's copy utility, or open the source and destination files (using fopen or some lower-level file-opening system call), read characters or blocks of characters from the source file, and write them to the destination file. Here is ...
2015-04-08, 1580👍, 0💬

How can I suppress the dreaded MS-DOS Abort, Retry, Ignore? message?
How can I suppress the dreaded MS-DOS Abort, Retry, Ignore? message? Among other things, you need to intercept the DOS Critical Error Interrupt, interrupt 24H. See the comp.os.msdos.programmer
2015-04-06, 1580👍, 0💬

How can I write data files which can be read on other machines with different word size, byte order, or floating point formats?
How can I write data files which can be read on other machines with different word size, byte order, or floating point formats? The most portable solution is to use text files (usually ASCII), written with fprintf and read with fscanf or the like. (Similar advice also applies to network protocols.) ...
2015-02-23, 1579👍, 0💬

Why doesnt that code work?
Why doesn't the code short int s; scanf("%d", &s); work? When converting %d, scanf expects a pointer to an int. To convert to a short int, use %hd .
2015-10-28, 1578👍, 0💬

Why do some versions of toupper act strangely if given an upper-case letter?
Why do some versions of toupper act strangely if given an upper-case letter? Why does some code call islower before toupper? In earlier times, toupper was a function-like preprocessor macro and was defined to work only on lower-case letters; it misbehaved if applied to digits, punctuation, or letter...
2015-08-17, 1577👍, 0💬

When I read numbers from the keyboard with scanf ...
When I read numbers from the keyboard with scanf and a "%d\n" format, like this: int n; scanf("%d\n", &amp;n); printf("you typed %d\n", n); it seems to hang until I type one extra line of input. Perhaps surprisingly, \n in a scanf format string does not mean to expect a newline, but rather to re...
2015-10-23, 1576👍, 0💬

How can I increase the allowable number of simultaneously open files?
I'm getting an error, ``Too many open files''. How can I increase the allowable number of simultaneously open files? A: There are typically at least two resource limitations on the number of simultaneously open files: the number of low-level ``file descriptors'' or ``file handles'' available in the ...
2015-04-03, 1576👍, 0💬

When I set a float variable to, say, 3.1, why is printf printing it as 3.0999999?
When I set a float variable to, say, 3.1, why is printf printing it as 3.0999999? Most computers use base 2 for floating-point numbers as well as for integers, and just as for base 10, not all fractions are representable exactly in base 2. It's well-known that in base 10, a fraction like 1/3 = 0.333...
2015-07-03, 1575👍, 0💬

What's the difference between...?
What's the difference between #include &lt;> and #include "" ? The syntax is typically used with Standard or system-supplied headers, while "" is typically used for a program's own header files.
2016-02-16, 1573👍, 0💬

I have got this tricky preprocessing I want to do and I cant figure out a way to do it.
I have got this tricky preprocessing I want to do and I cant figure out a way to do it. C's preprocessor is not intended as a general-purpose tool. (Note also that it is not guaranteed to be available as a separate program.) Rather than forcing it to do something inappropriate, you might want to wri...
2016-01-19, 1569👍, 0💬

How can I generate random numbers with a normal or Gaussian distribution?
How can I generate random numbers with a normal or Gaussian distribution? There are a number of ways of doing this. 1. Exploit the Central Limit Theorem (``law of large numbers'') and add up several uniformly-distributed random numbers: #include &lt;stdlib.h> #include &lt;math.h> #define NSU...
2015-07-22, 1569👍, 0💬

What does it mean when the linker says that _end is undefined?
What does it mean when the linker says that _end is undefined? That message is a quirk of the old Unix linkers. You get an error about _end being undefined only when other symbols are undefined, too--fix the others, and the error about _end will disappear.
2015-07-06, 1569👍, 0💬

How can I handle floating-point exceptions gracefully?
How can I handle floating-point exceptions gracefully? On many systems, you can define a function matherr which will be called when there are certain floating-point errors, such as errors in the math routines in &lt;math.h>. You may also be able to use signal to catch SIGFPE
2015-03-04, 1567👍, 0💬

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