On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 20:52 +0530, Debarshi Ray wrote:
I had bought it only to learn about DOS routines for the mouse. Interrupt 33h I think
There are other places where you can learn about interrupt 0x33, 8-bit colors, playing WAVs and displaying BMPs in TurboC, etc.. One of them is the Internet.
EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSEE MEEEEEE............. DONT presume anything about ANYONE.
1. I and other normal MIDDLE CLASS students did NOT have access to the internet.
2. There were NO competent faculties around to guide us.
3. We had to use whatever WE HAD.
Considering all the above facts, I think I've turned out pretty well. Whatever knowledge, whatever skills I have developed are all self learned. FYKI I got a decent access to the internet only about 5 years ago. You might've been on the internet ever since its inception but we mere mortals have not.
These are not clever hacks by any stretch of the imagination. I have not had the privilege to look at the code written by any of these companies, but I have never across such things in any project worth its name. K&R is quite categorical about discouraging such usages.
Yes, but it is the REQUIREMENT of the times. I have not come across a single place where YPK stresses the importance of using such kind of constructs. All he shows the student is that IT IS POSSIBLE to do such stuff with C.
Buddy, you might've had CSE gurus all around you but most average children dont. So we have to go by what we can find and YPK's LUC is the most visible book around. Few people have heard about K&R's books. Well thats how the ground reality is.
And dont even get me started about what kind of students we have. They cant even learn using books by themselves I dont think they'll be able to write even the "Hello World!" program if you give them K&R's book. It is in no way meant for beginners. It is mainly a guide to how the C language works.
No they do not. The way these operators work is compiler dependent.
Yes, its undefined behavior. But as mentioned by YPK, the defacto compiler was TC and he uses it to demonstrate how operators work.
eg., it is often said ++i is more efficient than i++ when one simply has to increment i. But there is no guarantee that it will be so in every compiler under the sun. Therefore they are simply misleading the 'normal' students.
The 'normal' student doesnt understand how a compiler works. 99.9999% of our engineers dont know what a compiler is written in. There is no question of misleading anybody. The rest 0.0001% students are smart enough to find the right way!