[chbot] !!!!!!!! Choc fish challenge 2 !!!!!!!!!

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Charles Manning <manningc2 at actrix.gen.nz>wrote:

> On Thursday 04 August 2011 08:53:48 Andre Renaud wrote:
> > On 03/08/11 22:13, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> > > On Wed 03 Aug 2011 11:40:03 NZST +1200, Charles Manning wrote:
> > >> In my books there is also a very hot place reserved for those who
> write
> > >> things like
> > >> while((*x++ = *y++)){}
> > >
> > > You can't really compare this with previous examples. This one is much
> > > different because it is undefined, unpredictable and therefore useless
> > > and much worse. Your choc fish challenge was defined in its behaviour
> > > and predictable, although extremely bad programming and a convoluted
> way
> > > to say while(1); .
> >
> > I don't think this is undefined - isn't this a simple implementation of
> > strcpy (assuming x & y are char *)? It will continue around until it
> > assigns a 0 pointer, at which point it will stop. It would be undefined
> > if you had *x++ = *x++.
> >
>
> Exactly my reason why this is a bad code.
>
> The algorithm is hidden and non obvious.
>
> I'd far rather someone wrote:
>
> while((*x = *y)) {
>        x++;
>        y++;
> }
>
> I agree.

Expert coders can produce functional write only code, professionals
including the open source community should produce maintainable code.

Use the source code show the intent. Let the compiler do the optimisation.

If this was off topic, it certainly generated plenty of interest!

Richard
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