Best place to ask dumbish C questions?

comp.lang.c? It's been a while since I hung around there (back when dmr was actually on once in a while) but they tend to be a helpful lot for *language* issues. Implementation-specific questions ("I get this funny error message in Visuality Studioness."), not so much.

There is also an excellent FAQ at

that you should probably take a look at first. Read that, and mention that you have when you post your questions, along with what still doesn't make sense. As usual, the more specific you can be, the better the answers will be.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

I would say comp.lang.c.

- Look in the comp.lang.c FAQ first

- Make sure your question is phrased so that it is about the C language itself, rather than how to use a particular system or library. This distinction is not obvious at first, so you will likely need a thick skin too. But nothing compared to s.e.d. :)

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John Devereux

I had a quick look through some of the archives comp.lang.c and there seemed to be a body of opinion that believed that that NG was more about "Standards" than answering dumbish questions like mine.

Yep S.E.D can be a wierd place :( (I'll be glad when that election is over)

martin

All you need is to setup the killfile properly :) Filter out the leftist and rightist wheenie trash, and the SED traffic goes down by 10 times. They have no useful value anyway, as the chief wheenist use to say.

VLV

Unless you are looking for qualification as a language lawyer, the comp.lang.* hierarchy is not (IMHO) the place to ask.

If you are asking these questions because of some development you're doing with a cross-compiler (i.e. most embedded development) then you should ask here. Many (most) cross-compilers have a certain amount of special magic, especially those targeting Harvard-architecture micros.

Thanks for the link, I'm reading K+R 2nd ed. as well.

I just think I found the answer.

Time to walk around the block, have a coffee in the street bar, then see if I was right !

martin

I was using Forte Agent, I couldn't cope with it, so I'm back with FreeAgent, with no killfile, the 8031 of newsreaders

martin

See if your news server carries alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++

hope that helps

Joe Power

Another (and arguably better) language reference is Harbison & Steele "C: A Reference Manual"

Much as I love K&R (I even taught a few C classes using that as the textbook), it's not quite as handy. H&S has also been updated as the language standard evolved.

Earlier editions of the reference manual used the same blue-on-white layout as K&R, perhaps to emphasize that they're complementary, not competitors.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Thanks,

Just been looking on youtube for tutorials, they are all C++, not C, which is not much good for 8051's

Anyway, solved my little problem, it was how to use the itoa, p59 of K+R, I was trying to use

itoa( 1234, nums[ ] )

instead of

itoa( 1234, nums ) . I could not find out why I dont need the [] when I call itoa

martin

Dmr still shows up there rarely. Implementation-specific stuff is off-topic, and normally jumped upon from a height.

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 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
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... snip ...

No, the group for discussion of standard modification etc. is comp.std.c. c.l.c concentrates on the language and its use, as described in the standards. This way everybody knows what language is being used.

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 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
 [page]: