Re: [TUHS] v7 K&R C

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 08:55:46AM +0100, Dr Iain Maoileoin wrote: I think of it less as a line than as a continuum. I am reminded of an input routine I wrote for a sort several decades ago. Allocate a pointer from one end of memory, start reading a record into the other end of memory with something like while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) if (c == '\n') { /* entire record is now there */ Very easy to understand, no guesswork about allocating pointers versus records, and a complete and utter pig. 50% of the processing time of the entire sort went into loading records. There were 5 or 6 comparisons being done for every *character* of input (I omitted the bit about verifying that there was room to store the next character). It might have made for good reading, but nobody would have used it, because much faster sorts were already available, and most people *use* code, not *read* it. So I had to push into uglier territory to get something that worked well enough to be worth reading.