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Semiotics of functional programming

In contrast to the usual imperative languages (e.g., C, Fortran, and Ada), in which variables represent cells in memory that can be modified using the assignment operator = (or  :=), functional...

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C89 Standard

A text version of a non-final draft is below.  Here’s the pdf of the final version. (This foreword is not a part of American National Standard for Information Systems --- Programming Language C,...

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Dennis Ritchie on alias analysis in the C programming language 1988

This 1998 note by Dennis Ritchie from comp.lang.c  (and also  here ) is very current since the concept of noalias has definitely crept back into the standard. I have reproduced it verbatim, but lightly...

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C is not a serious programming language

The C Standards process over the last few decades has addressed both optimization and pointer type safety largely through a concept called “undefined behavior”.  The idea is that instead of  positive...

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Undefined behavior in C is a reading error.

Considering how important “undefined behavior” has become to C semantics and the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14 Committee, the lack of any reference to it in the K&R ANSI book is notable and the...

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Dissing the PDP11

In computer science academia, C  along with UNIX, and PDP11s, is as unfashionable as can be: the equivalent of other 1970’s relics, like polyester leisure suits and mullets. In 2018 ACM Queue published...

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Memory model and semantics for C

A perceptive note from Linus Torvalds about the C/C++ “memory model” is reproduced below. From Linus Torvalds <> Date Thu, 7 Jun 2018 08:40:49 -0700 Subject Re: LKMM litmus test for Roman...

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PLOS 2021 paper: How ISO-C became unusable for operating system development

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Threads in C

There is a nice example thread semantics in a paper by David Goldblatt (P1916R0)  which illustrates a couple of things about multi-core processing – including how interesting it is and how poorly...

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Unforgivable C programming 1

As many people never tire of explaining, the C language is obsolete, unsafe, unwelcome in polite company and generally looked down on  by thought leaders and adepts of λ calculus alike.  Here’s a...

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