Re: Ancient history

Nick Maclaren wrote:

> In article <sK-dndk1hcuYzzPfRVn-3g@comcast.com>,
> Douglas A. Gwyn <DAGwyn@null.net> wrote:
>
>>Nick Maclaren wrote:
>>
>>>Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>A simple action is to add a statement saying, "Checks for
>>>>queue/buffer overflows shall be performed and an appropriate
>>>>recovery action performed."
>>>
>>>The problem is that nobody knows when such things are legal and
>>>when they are not in C.
>>
>>That's nonsense. It is easy to check for an
>>overflow situation before it occurs.
>
>
> Which is orthogonal and irrelevant to my point. If nobody knows where
> the boundary is between overflowing and access to an extended area
> (i.e. permitted use), then it is impossible to insert such checking
> correctly. And that is the case.

Computers have no common sense - to work everything has to be planned.
If the programmer does not know where the boundary is and his program
cannot determine the location of the boundary (possibly by asking the
operating system) then to achieve reliability that area must not be used.

Andrew Swallow
Received on Thu Sep 29 21:43:47 2005