Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program? Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 06:06:37 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 87 Message-ID: <86ecyronqa.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <87a59hvgyk.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 14:06:40 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="7c01e97b5d1836204810413d59dbf156"; logging-data="3463173"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/zbVzWWDpcdBGYrSku1wUIwj4nWDcQ8FU=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:vkZKE2RaLWZLPftpBs708l4wUGA= sha1:RdhbSCh0iS1xYKyx4keaIQu4bCA= Bytes: 3981 Richard Heathfield writes: > On 19/03/2025 05:02, DFS wrote: > >> On 3/19/2025 12:51 AM, Richard Heathfield wrote: >> >>> On 19/03/2025 04:42, DFS wrote: >>> >>>> Pretty easy fixes: >>>> >>>> 1 use scanf() >>>> 2 update int to long >>>> 3 handle special case of n = 1 >>>> 4 instead of collecting the results in a char variable, I print >>>> them as they're calculated >>> >>> You've also fixed another glitch which may or may not have been >>> significant: >>> >>> $ file post2.txt >>> post2.txt: news, ASCII text >>> >>> So wherever that UTF-8 came from, it's gone now. >> >> Cool. Thanks for looking at it. >> >> Hey, how are your C book (from 2000) sales? Thought about a new >> edition? > > I'm not sure a new edition is necessary, but if it is to be > written it would be better served by someone like Keith or Tim, > both of whom have (as I have not) kept up with the million-and-one > changes that appear to have assailed the simple language I once > enjoyed. The C99 standard has a list of 54 what it calls "major changes", although IMO many or most of those are fairly minor. There are also other differences relative to C90, but most of them are simply clarifications or slight changes in wording. I went through the list of major changes and selected out the items I consider the most significant. Here they are, organized into several related areas. Language constructs taken out from C90: REMOVED: implicit int REMOVED: implicit function declaration Comments: // comments are now allowed Preprocessor: empty macro arguments macros with variable number of arguments Lexical: improved lower bounds for identifier length - went from 6 and 31 (for global and non-global) in C90 to 31 and 63 in C99 Types added: boolean type _Bool complex numbers long long and unsigned long long New language constructs: more general initialization for aggregates and unions compound literals designated initializers mixing of declarations and code (including in for() initializers) Array related: arrays and array types with non-constant extents, aka VLA, for variable length arrays, and VMT, for variably modified type flexible array members (recognizing the "struct hack") Miscellaneous: 'inline' functions return with expression now disallowed in void function, and vice versa I included the "array related" items, and also complex numbers, as significant items, even though they aren't used very often. I think it's important to know about these features, despite their infrequent use. (Incidentally, both complex numbers and VLA/VMT were made optional in C11.)