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From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@talktalk.net>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:48:55 +0000
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cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:

[...]

> In any event, this seems simpler than what you posted:
>
> #include <stddef.h>
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include <stdlib.h>
>
> int
> main(int argc, char *argv[])
> {
>         if (argc != 2) {
>                 fprintf(stderr, "Usage: matchd <str>\n");
>                 return EXIT_FAILURE;
>         }
>
>         for (const char *p = argv[1]; *p != '\0'; p++)
>                 if ('0' <= *p && *p <= '9')
>                         return EXIT_SUCCESS;
>
>         return EXIT_FAILURE;
> }

It's not only 4 lines longer but in just about every individual aspect
syntactically more complicated and more messy and functionally more
clumsy. This is particularly noticable in the loop

         for (const char *p = argv[1]; *p != '\0'; p++)
                 if ('0' <= *p && *p <= '9')
                         return EXIT_SUCCESS;

the loop header containing a spuriously qualified variable declaration,
the loop body and half of the termination condition. The other half then
follows as special-case in the otherwise useless loop body.

It looks like a copy of my code which each individual bit redesigned
under the guiding principle of "Can we make this more complicated?", eg,

char **argv

declares an array of pointers (as each pointer in C points to an array)
and

char *argv[]

accomplishes exactly the same but uses both more characters and more
different kinds of characters.