Re: I watch Bones for the accuracy and attention to detail...

On 2010-04-22, David Gersic <usenet_spam_trap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 22 Apr 2010 06:10:37 GMT, Seebs <usenet-nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
p.s.: Interestingly, I've found similar error density in Herbert
Schildt's books on C. I don't *think* he does it on purpose...

Schildt's books are the canonical example of "wrong". If he's not doing
it on purpose, then he doesn't know what he's doing. Ignorance or
avarice, it's hard to tell the difference.

After careful study, I have concluded that he genuinely does not understand
this stuff. I base this conclusion on the following observations:

1. In the 3rd edition of his book, he described both getc() and getchar()
with the same sentence, asserting that, because EOF is a "valid integer
value", you could not detect end of file in a binary file by checking
for it.

2. I bitched about it on a web page, but only mentioned the second instance,
in the description of getchar().

3. In the 4th edition of his book, that sentence has been removed from the
description of getchar(), but not from the description of getc().

4. All his examples still use a char for the return from getchar().

-s
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