On Thursday, March 7, 2002, at 03:57 PM, Dimitri Maziuk wrote:
Anyhow, my point was, name 4 problem areas in C.
You're lucky with 'none of the above'. It could be...
1. No array bounds checking (Fix: use vector<> or equivalent)
Real-world idiot fix: My name is 7 characters; give it twenty,
we'll never need more than that! Then use that twenty inline in
the code, as well as simplifying the expressions a little so we
get the related constants 21 (w/ null), 19 (can't count,
paranoid), 8, 9, 10 (unicode), and infinity (core dump).
2. Pointers (Fix: use references, iterators etc.).
Real-world idiot fix: Pass everything by value. Who needs
pointers, references, etc.? Use indices with magic constants as
the bounds (see above) to iterate arrays.
BTW: I disagree _strongly_ that pointers are a misfeature of C.
They are a very useful tool. However, misuse of pointers
is a misfeature of some programmers.
3. Forgetting to free() malloc()'ed memory (Fix: use auto_ptr<>,
destructors etc.)
Real-world idiot fix: Buy more memory. If that proves
impossible, increase amount of disk used for swap. In the event
of hitting architectural limits, go 64-bit. Or just make the
program crash more often. Then it won't leak as much memory.
Tell the user to save often.
4. Using pointers to (hopefully array) (hopefully allocated) (hopefully
null-terminated) of char as string data type (see also 1, 2, & 3)
(Fix: use std::string)
Real-world idiot fix: Add 'hopefully not overflowed' to the
list. Fix allocation problems by allocating on the stack. If
worried about array not being large enough, increase static
size. See #1. If worried about excess stack usage, see #3. And,
for the hell of it, see #4 ;-)
