From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <622b8580ff4fa7e12cb655bf19694fe8@vitanuova.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] same functions everywhere
From: rog@vitanuova.com
In-Reply-To: <3EBB29D8.7030200@null.net>
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Date: Fri,  9 May 2003 14:21:25 +0100
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DAGwyn@null.net:
> when sizeof(char)==
> sizeof(int) it is very likely that all-one bits is a valid
> data value *as well as* the EOF marker

don't most >8bit character encodings (including unicode) provide at
least one code point to represent "not a character"?

anyway, i'm not arguing about the design of getc.  maybe it should
have been

	int getc(FILE *f, char *c);

filling in the character at c iff it returns 1.  some of the plan 9
rune(2) functions work in this kind of way.

however, i would argue that using exceptions for such a thing would be
fairly unwieldy, and end up obfuscating what should be plain,
straightforward code.

exceptions are surprising things: they do not facilitate linear
reading of the code; they should be kept for genuinely surprising
conditions.