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From: Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: relearning C: why does an in-place change to a char* segfault?
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2024 07:22:01 +0200
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On 28.09.2024 05:34, Keith Thompson wrote:
> Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> writes:
>> Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> The more C is changed to resemble C++ the worse it becomes.  It
>>>> isn't surprising that you like it.
> 
> For context, since the parent article is from a month and a half
> ago, I was discussing a proposal to change a future C standard to
> refer to "constants" as "literals".  I mentioned that I think it's
> a good idea.

I've heard of and seen various forms to name such entities...
- in a Pascal and an Eiffel book I find all these named "constants"
- in an Algol 68 book I read about "standard designations"
- in a book about languages and programming in general I find
    "literals" ("abc"), "numerals" (42), "word-symbols" (false),
    "graphemes" (�), etc., differentiated
- I've also have heard about "standard representations [for the
    values of a respective type]"; also a type-independent term

I also think (for various reasons) that "constants" is not a good
term. (Personally I like terms like the Algol 68 term, that seems
to "operate" on another [more conceptual] abstraction level.)

But you'll certainly have to expect a lot of anger if the terminology
of some standards documents get changed from one version to another.

Janis