geacc022%timevx@CIT-HAMLET.ARPA (07/31/85)
Thanks to those who responded with suggestions on traps that programmers raised on a VAX should avoid when trying to write portable code. Here's a summary of what was mentioned; most of these have been discussed (sometimes at great length) on this list: Pointer-pointer and -integer differences int != long != short NULL != 0 Signed vs. unsigned chars Alignment (there *is* sometimes padding) Byte ordering (aka the NUXI problem -- esp. but not all byte-swapping) ASCII characters Declarations of external functions Declarations of functions returning non-ints Length of external symbols 8-bit characters (and 16-bit shorts...) One's-complement problems (e.g., -1 != ~0) & operator on parameters and other non-variables. Thanks to those who responded, blarson@usc-ecl.arpa mbm@mit-xx.arpa uwmcsd1!jgd utzoo!henry mbarker@bbnz.arpa baylor!peter mcvax!ken Gary Ansok geacc022%timevx @ cit-hamlet.arpa gea @ caltech.bitnet ...ucbvax!cithep!timevx#geacc022 "All the world loves a straight man."