Re: [TUHS] The UNIX Command Language (1976)

When I wrote yacc, my first thought was to use goto's when implementing the finite state machine that is the heart of the parser. That's how FSM's work! I got the code written, but the C compiler complained and wouldn't compile. It turned out that, while goto was implemented in C, you could only have 10 of them! So I had to use a switch statement. I also recently came upon one of my first C programs -- I wrote a "go fish" game for my son as a practice in using the language. Reading the code was most instructive: 1. I had used FOUR gotos! I can't remember the last time I wrote a goto... 2. The program had a bug -- char being used as an int. Gave an advantage to the player. 3. The game was surprisingly hard to beat. I had to add a "dumb me down" flag because my kids never won. I think the game was distributed in some of the early releases. At one point, at a conference, the speaker accused the game of cheating! The game was just very good at remembering that if the player had asked it for a 6, and then it drew a 6 later, it would ask the player for 6 again. On 2020-12-01 08:39, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote: