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comp.lang.c Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ List)

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From: scs@eskimo.com (Steve Summit)

Newsgroups: comp.lang.c , comp.lang.c.moderated

Subject: comp.lang.c Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ List)

Date: 1 Mar 2004 11:00:11 GMT

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[Last modified February 7, 1999 by scs.]

This article is Copyright 1990-1999 by Steve Summit. Content from the

book _C Programming FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions_ is made available

here by permission of the author and the publisher as a service to the

community. It is intended to complement the use of the published text

and is protected by international copyright laws. The content is made

available here and may be accessed freely for personal use but may not

be republished without permission.

Certain topics come up again and again on this newsgroup. They are good

questions, and the answers may not be immediately obvious, but each time

they recur, much net bandwidth and reader time is wasted on repetitive

responses, and on tedious corrections to the incorrect answers which are

inevitably posted.

This article, which is posted monthly, attempts to answer these common

questions definitively and succinctly, so that net discussion can move

on to more constructive topics without continual regression to first

principles.

No mere newsgroup article can substitute for thoughtful perusal of a

full-length tutorial or language reference manual. Anyone interested

enough in C to be following this newsgroup should also be interested

enough to read and study one or more such manuals, preferably several

times. Some C books and compiler manuals are unfortunately inadequate;

a few even perpetuate some of the myths which this article attempts to

refute. Several noteworthy books on C are listed in this article's

bibliography; see also questions 18.9 and 18.10. Many of the questions

and answers are cross-referenced to these books, for further study by

the interested and dedicated reader.

If you have a question about C which is not answered in this article,

first try to answer it by checking a few of the referenced books, or by

asking knowledgeable colleagues, before posing your question to the net

at large. There are many people on the net who are happy to answer

questions, but the volume of repetitive answers posted to one question,

as well as the growing number of questions as the net attracts more

readers, can become oppressive. If you have questions or comments

prompted by this article, please reply by mail rather than following up --

this article is meant to decrease net traffic, not increase it.

Besides listing frequently-asked questions, this article also summarizes

frequently-posted answers. Even if you know all the answers, it's worth

skimming through this list once in a while, so that when you see one of

its questions unwittingly posted, you won't have to waste time

answering. (However, this is a large and heavy document, so don't

assume that everyone on the newsgroup has managed to read all of it in

detail, and please don't roll it up and thwack people over the head with

it just because they missed their answer in it.)

This article was last modified on February 7, 1999, and its travels may

have taken it far from its original home on Usenet. It may, however,

be out-of-date, particularly if you are looking at a printed copy

or one retrieved from a tertiary archive site or CD-ROM. You should

be