PRECEDENT FOR USE OF =

der Mouse mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP
Tue Jul 29 08:31:07 AEST 1986


In article <2237 at brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn at BRL.ARPA (VLD/VMB) quotes:
>> "I hardly ever get a program to pass through lint without getting
>> least a dozen lines of garbage."
and writes:
> Perhaps "lint" is trying to tell you something.

     I refuse to cast, for example, printf(), or strcpy(), to void
just to keep lint happy.  I don't cast normal assignments to void, why
should I cast strcpy() (which is conceptually a string assignment)?  I
refuse to hold with malloc(10) giving a type mismatch error (lint wants
unsigned int for the argument).  I refuse to listen to possible pointer
alignment problems when casting malloc(n) to (struct foo *).

     C assumes you know what you're doing and lets you do it, wherein
lies it power and usefulness.  If you want the compiler (typechecker,
whatever) to protect you from yourself, use a strongly typed language
like Pascal!  Don't complain because C isn't the best language for your
application; instead, try to pick a more appropriate one.
-- 
					der Mouse

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