A plea for restraint

[Jerry Schwarz]

Please, please, please double check your answers to questions.
Recently there have been a rash of incidents where a beginner posts a
question and answer is posted that appears to have been from another
beginner and is completely wrong.   As a consequence, instead of
getting a couple of answers to the original question we see a flood
of followups to the wrong answer. This is understandable, since many
people feel it is more important to correct a wrong assertion in this
group than to answer a question.

I am not accusing anybody of behaving badly, I am sure that all
posters have good motivations.  But I urge you to either verify your
answers by running a test, or looking up a reference. Rely on your
"understanding" only if you are really a world class C expert, and
even then only if you are not posting under conditions of sleep
deprivation.

Think of posting to comp.lang.c as getting up in the front of a
filled 5,000 seat auditorium.  Doesn't that make you want to
spend a little time preparing? 

Jerry Schwarz
AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill