Re: Basing a field on an unreferenced field(s) doesn't work

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Denis Robitaille wrote:

> This is the thing with pointers. It can introduce bugs when you dont
> expect it.

That's not "the thing with pointers", its "the thing with computers".
If you sit and write programs all day every day, not a day will pass in
your career where you don't discover a bug that you didn't think of.
Even if you don't use pointers at all.


> For example, let say that all 3 fields were reference. You
> could still be in trouble if you specify a dim of 4 for your array.
> What will be in the fourth elements? You are also assuming that
> consecutive fields in a file are stored in consecutive memory location
> which is not always the case.

It's not the pointer's fault that you assumed something.  You could make
the same mistake using a data structure or certain types of parameter
logic.

That's why we test our code.   That's why we beta test.   That's why even
after testing our code and beta testing our apps, we still find bugs.

It's not a problem with pointers.  It's a problem with people not seeing
every possibility of every line of code they write.  If only we could get
upgrades for our brains...