Implementing strstr

[spinoza1111]

It seems deeply implausible to me.  Both of my parents taught college
mathematics, and I retain to this day an instinctive distrust of empirical
methods as unreliable and shoddy.

Peter, even if both of your parents taught college mathematics, it's
still possible that you're mathematically jejune, so here is a test/
checklist I'd like you to complete. I will identify just some the
mathematical experiences I had before I had access to any computer
whatsoever. Check the experiences you have also have, and feel free to
add your own. I understand that given your age, there was never a time
when you didn't have access to a computer, so although I think this
nonaccess beneficial, it is not part of this evaluation.

1. Did formal proofs in geometry at high school level
2. Made constructions in geometry using the unmarked straightedge and
compass
3. Figured out the basics of analytic geometry (drawing a graph from
an equation) without taking the class because bored in Religion class
4. Completed Philosophy 210 (Introduction to Logic) including exposure
to pre-20th century formal reasoning (Venn diagrams and Lewis
Carroll's methods). Grade: A
5. Completed Philosophy 310 (Symbolic Logic): propositional logic,
truth tables, lazy evaluation, quantificational logic, model theory.
Grade: A
6. Completed Philosophy 410 (Set Theory): naive set theory and
existential set theory based on Set Theory and Its Logic (Quine). Only
student in class able to prove the validity of induction (proof ran to
five pages) in Quine's system. Grade: A
7. Read Hopcroft and Ullman's Formal Languages and their Relation to
Automata and did a number of exercises.
8. Designed a computer using rubber bands in series, parallel, and
with a half twist (for inversion) but lacked the manual skills to
build it.
9. Mail ordered the Cardiac computer (a hand operated cardboard
device) from Ma Bell and programmed it.
10. Lost my cherry on the same evening astronauts first landed on the
moon. Admittedly not a mathematical experience. Et tu, Brutus?

Your own experiences must not involve an electronic digital computer
as above.

 

[spinoza1111]

This is plausible.  He's certainly very consistent in adopting the opposite
of anything someone he dislikes says, without any regard to whether the
resulting position is consistent with his other claims.

Peter, you're feeding a real "troll". Check it out: Sanders never
contributes code or discusses C. He is here to bully people. Like
quertyuiop, he uses a simple rule: he finds out the least popular
poster and targets him.

You've been taken in.

As I've said, I left the field in preference to working with
incompetents like Peter.

This would explain his obsession with claiming that I don't program, and
then his revised obsession with claiming that I do it very badly.

Thanks.  That makes a lot more sense.  Also, now that I've found out that
he's not just *a* usenet kook, but *the* Usenet kook (hint:  He's part
of the events from which we got "Godwin's Law"), up there in the company
of people like Archimedes Plutonium, I'm a lot more ready to accept that
his behavior is comprehensible.  Loosely speaking.

Mike Godwin and I first "met" each other in 2000 in cyberspace because
we were both asked by Cass Sunstein to be on a panel discussing free
speech in cyberspace. I'd been asked because of the quality of my
content. When I received the invitation, I was surprised, but I
verified it with my former supervisor at Princeton.

Godwin's law had been developed years before.

Dweebach, I'm afraid you're the cartoon caricature.

 

[spinoza1111]

Seebs wrote:

)> Clap, clap. Another content-free post from Spinny. Tell me, have you
)> always had attention deficit disorder?
)
) I would point out that his behavior is not particularly consistent with
) attention deficit disorder.  What he's showing is much too specialized;
) he only loses interest in things when it starts looking like it won't make
) him look good.  His babbling about structured programming looked like a
) great way to assert dominance over poor lil' uneducated me, but he forgot
) that there are other posters here, some of whom have done a lot of formal
) study of computer science.  

Narcissism perhaps ?  I think that term came up before in this froup.

That would only apply if a small set of self-selected respondents
(N<10) constituted a meaningful norm, but they don't. Instead, the
people I'm responding to are for the most part themselves disordered,
notably Peter, who has conveniently identified for us serious personal
disorders which in his case need to be addressed before he starts in
on others. He's risking his reputation as an Apress author, his job
and a lawsuit by making these diagnoses when he's so freely divulged
that he doesn't "get" normal signals and has to use medication to cope
with situations that normal people deal with more effectively.

There are psychologically normal and qualified people here: blm,
Kenny, Willem, Ben et al. But blm seems to be a corporate female of
the sort who thinks her mandate is to enable and normalize deviance in
order to be fair, and winds up creating more damage than she intended.
And here, for the same reason that even "normal" people joined Lynch
mobs in the American south, for the same reason "good Germans"
applauded Hitler, Willem replicates the problem.

But overall, people who are in fact unemployable in any other fields
and quite possibly on the verge of being fired as their companies are
bought and sold can go collectively insane in small groups, and here,
they do so by means of "psychological projection".

For example, Seebach feels a deep anxiety about his lack of
preparation and competence, and this is why he feels it so necessary
to get others to agree that carefully formatting code and using
literate comments is "bizarre" as are cultural references. This is
because I might very well be the sort of person and programmer he
wanted to be, and he must, in his mind, transform/morph me to what he
fears himself to be: a loser. In the twilight logic of the nearly
insane, this means he's for the nonce not a loser.

For the record, after this charge, that I have a "narcissistic
personality disorder", was made, I asked my therapist and life coach,
of course a trained psychologist, whether she thought I did, and she
said I don't.

I'm afraid that if this Internet bullying situation rises to the level
of Peter's employer or Apress management, people are going to be
disciplined and it won't be pleasant. If it goes to a court of law, my
more literate and urbane style always wins. So I suggest that you
creeps desist.

 

[spinoza1111]

I know, I know. I shouldn't do it really. I picture an 18th century me,
with powdered wig and dressed like a fop, visiting Bedlam and seeing
Spinny behind bars, drooling. Very unkindly I then poke him with a
pointed stick.

In other words, you'd rather be a Fop than a Man
Lo! Behold Tim Streater's miserable and foolish Plan.

Of course, in the court, posts like this are called "evidence".

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Peter, you're feeding a real "troll". Check it out: Sanders never
contributes code or discusses C. He is here to bully people. Like
quertyuiop, he uses a simple rule: he finds out the least popular
poster and targets him.

You've been taken in

"Troll" is a racist word, its origin being in Nordic legends
justifying the ethnic cleansing of indigenous European peoples: as
such it is akin to "gypsy" or "siegourner" in that it is a name given
from outside which mischaracterises a group of people: here that group
is the dissidents at this site.
...
Furthermore, your usage is isomorphic to anti-Semitic grammar.

So, using the word "troll" is a sign of anti-Semitism. Except when you
use it, of course.

Of course, as your etymology is bogus, I personally have no problem
calling you a troll, of the "method" type, an unusual kind who is not
playing a role but living it, is convinced of the truth of each of his
insane declarations when he says it, but is blind to any
self-contradictions, let alone lack of logic.

And if you want to describe the motivations of Harlan Sanders (a
personality created for a specific purpose as people like you could
well try to hit back via my employer or others in my real life, as you
have attempted to when Seebs annoyed you), he has chosen the biggest
asshole in the group as a "target". Which I acknowledge as a rather
pointless exercise, as you have been an asshole online for decades and
will continue to be one indefinitely.

Interesting that you recognize yourself as "the least popular poster"
yet can draw no lesson from this, other than "everyone else is an
idiot".

As I've said, I left the field in preference to working with
incompetents like Peter.

Well, we can agree that your classification of Seebs is as true as
your own self assessment and your stated reasons for "leaving the
field".

Mike Godwin and I first "met" each other in 2000 in cyberspace

A quick search finds you had been arguing with him a decade earlier...
maybe someone thought having you there might raise some sparks with
him, a Jerry Springer-style confrontation.

And amusing that you cite being in an online chat with someone famous
as an endorsement of your own importance.

 

[spinoza1111]

So, using the word "troll" is a sign of anti-Semitism. Except when you
use it, of course.

Of course, as your etymology is bogus, I personally have no problem
calling you a troll, of the "method" type, an unusual kind who is not
playing a role but living it, is convinced of the truth of each of his
insane declarations when he says it, but is blind to any
self-contradictions, let alone lack of logic.

And if you want to describe the motivations  of Harlan Sanders (a
personality created for a specific purpose as people like you  could
well try to hit back via my employer or others in my real life, as you
have attempted to when Seebs annoyed you), he has chosen the biggest
asshole in the group as a "target". Which I acknowledge as a rather
pointless exercise, as you have been an asshole online for decades and
will continue to be one indefinitely.

Interesting that you recognize yourself as "the least popular poster"
yet can draw no lesson from this, other than "everyone else is an
idiot".

Strangely, this is the most likely explanation. Why?

Normally, if a crazy man thinks this in even a small community, there
are several hundred people who concur. But even in this case, the
community can be wrong. For example, Nash in Roanoke, according to his
biographer Sylvia Nash, was thought crazy by his neighbors, but not at
Princeton.

People today, especially on the Internet, are resistant to the idea
that so and so might be "really" a Misunderstood Genius, because part
of the media culture war on humanity has been the mocking of the
"genius". It's part of a media war on Bolshevism's (flawed) notion of
the "revolutionary vanguard" in which cartoons instruct people that
they cannot without looking like fools change anything.

However, here, N (the number of correspondents) is both self-selected
with common characteristics and much smaller than even a small
community (close to 10 or so). This means that any statistical
consensus such as "spinoza is crazy" is worthless, both because N is
meaninglessly small, and also because self-selection to post usually
indicates a basic narcissism, and a belief on the poster's part that
he has something worthwhile...as in the case where Dweebach posts a
patch to a poorly written system and expects applause.

This narcissism is confronted by "trolls" who usually do have
something useful and/or original to contribute because they retain
traditional markers of humanity such as Kenny's sense of the absurd.

Not all posters are like this. Others, like blm, are almost normal
people...who as a consequence of corporate life (including the
corporate-academic) have become enablers of deviance. Still others
fear consequences on the job should they defend the mark du jour and
so stand idly by, trying, like Ben or mathematicians of the Third
Reich, to keep the discussion "technical".

Well, we can agree that your classification of Seebs is as true as
your own self assessment and your stated reasons for "leaving the
field".


A quick search finds you had been arguing with him a decade earlier...
maybe someone thought having you there might raise some sparks with
him, a Jerry Springer-style confrontation.

And amusing that you cite being in an online chat with someone famous
as an endorsement of your own importance.

http://press.princeton.edu/sunstein/sun_forum.txt

This was not an online chat. I was asked to participate, based on
postings on usenet and elsewhere.

I'm not trying to establish "importance". I'm demonstrating that I
deserve, as does anyone here, the right to be recognized as a
participant in a civil conversation. Unfortunately, ever since the
Internet ceased being Arpanet, losers like you have used this medium
to bully people. I believe that because of the problem you create,
Internet access should be restricted to licensed and registered
individuals admitted by examination and a criminal background check.

At least Peter thinks he's a competent programmer, and has some sort
of programming experience. But you're here to make trouble. And
eventually, you're going to get legal trouble.

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Strangely, this is the most likely explanation. Why?

Because you're a narcissist.

http://press.princeton.edu/sunstein/sun_forum.txt

This was not an online chat. I was asked to participate, based on
postings on usenet and elsewhere.

Asked to participate in an online chat to promote a book. Seeing as
the topic was online extremism, no doubt you were "invited" as an
example of the lunacy that can flourish online.

But who cares. Several people logged on to a site 10 years ago,
including you and Godwin. You keep straining to include yourself with
anyone famous. You can't go a day without mentioning your brief
acquaintance with Nash 30 years ago.

I'm not trying to establish "importance". I'm demonstrating that I
deserve, as does anyone here, the right to be recognized as a
participant in a civil conversation.


autistic ****
...
Hey, motherfucker.

etc., etc.

Unfortunately, ever since the
Internet ceased being Arpanet, losers like you have used this medium
to bully people.

You're the one who threatens people, with physical beatings and/or
legal proceedings when you fail to get the deference you demand.
Though since no one takes you seriously it makes you a rather
ineffective bully.

I believe that because of the problem you create,
Internet access should be restricted to licensed and registered
individuals admitted by examination and a criminal background check.

You choose to participate in this unmoderated forum. You'd have been
banned long ago from here for your attacks, obscenities and extreme
waste of bandwidth if there was any regulation.

And eventually, you're going to get legal trouble.

Oh **** off. How many times have you said this? Just go masturbate in
a corner rather than online.

Look, I'll help you: EDWARD NILGES IS UNFIT TO PERFORM ANY
PROFESSIONAL TASK. HE IS A THIEF. HE IS A TERRORIST.

Does that hit all the bases?
Sue me.
I'm waiting.

 

[spinoza1111]

Because you're a narcissist.


Asked to participate in an online chat to promote a book. Seeing as
the topic was online extremism, no doubt you were "invited" as an
example of the lunacy that can flourish online.

But who cares. Several people logged on to a site 10 years ago,
including you and Godwin.  You keep straining to include yourself with
anyone famous. You can't go a day without mentioning your brief
acquaintance with Nash 30 years ago.


etc., etc.


You're the one who threatens people, with physical beatings and/or
legal proceedings when you fail to get the deference you demand.
Though since no one takes you seriously it makes you a rather
ineffective bully.


You choose to participate in this unmoderated forum. You'd have been
banned long ago from here for your attacks, obscenities and extreme
waste of bandwidth if there was any regulation.


Oh **** off. How many times have you said this? Just go masturbate in
a corner rather than online.

Look, I'll help you: EDWARD NILGES IS UNFIT TO PERFORM ANY
PROFESSIONAL TASK. HE IS A THIEF. HE IS A TERRORIST.

Does that hit all the bases?
Sue me.
I'm waiting.

No point, Orville. I wasn't referring to a civil action in your case.
I'm saying you're going to get in trouble with your ex-wife because
it's clear that you're a loser with anger management issues.

Seebach is in civil trouble because he appears to be working on behalf
of a corporation and because he presents himself as something he's
not. Whereas nobody is going to pay any attention to some buffoon like
you except the local sheriff.

 

[blmblm]

Actually, I like it the way it is -- I get a filtered feed of an occasional
actual technical question, without the flood of irrelevant insults.

The guy's unambiguously a usenet kook, but his questions on technical
issues are occasionally interesting, for much the same reason that it
can be occasionally interesting to try to answer questions asked by
other novice-level programmers. It's just not very rewarding to me
to search through several-hundred line posts full of tinfoil hat nonsens
to find an occasional gem like his observation that there should be
a default case in a getopt() switch because someone could modify the
argument string but not remember to add the corresponding case. That
was actually a good idea, I think.

So I appreciate it when people who have more patience with his rambling
nonsense than I do filter out the occasional things worth responding to
and make them noticeable.

Just for the record, I think I'm going to more or less bow out
of that role; it really does feel uncomfortably like "let's you
and him fight." As a parting shot, maybe, I'll mention message IDs
of two posts you *might* want to look at [*].

<24d9395d-4684-49cf-b9fb-3ccab608ca49@n34g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>

is a reply to one of your posts about your build tool thing, the one
that uses (used?) the quick-and-dirty %s-replacing code.

<262e34a1-0e34-47b2-9fbc-459a25f09473@q16g2000yqq.googlegroups.com>

is a follow-up to your comment about your parents being math teachers,
and has a specific list of questions.

[*] Or not.

 

[blmblm]

[ snip ]

Well, a typical thing would be, say you want to run the same script hundreds
of times, you'd load the script once and then execute it hundreds of times.
(This is how any performance-oriented implementation of Ruby on Rails will
do it, for instance.)

I guess I'm not quite understanding how you load something once and
reuse it -- I mean, where/how does it stick around? -- but the problem
may be that I'm thinking in terms of a typical shell environment, in
which once a process/program ends, its resources are freed, while you
(or whoever) are talking about -- something else.

Someone else -- spinoza1111 maybe -- mentioned TSR, which I guess
is how one would accomplish this in, um, DOS maybe? (an environment
I know next to nothing about), but -- is there a UNIX equivalent?
I guess shared libraries *might* sort of qualify, but isn't the
operating system allowed to remove shared-library code from memory
when there are no processes using it? Or is there a way to keep it
around .... (Hm, maybe explicitly managing "shared memory segments"?)

(Off-topic, but not as badly as some recent posts.)

[ snip ]

 

[Seebs]

Just for the record, I think I'm going to more or less bow out
of that role; it really does feel uncomfortably like "let's you
and him fight." As a parting shot, maybe, I'll mention message IDs
of two posts you *might* want to look at [*].

<24d9395d-4684-49cf-b9fb-3ccab608ca49@n34g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>

is a reply to one of your posts about your build tool thing, the one
that uses (used?) the quick-and-dirty %s-replacing code.

Used, past-tense; we changed the way we generated the strings in which
to perform substitutions, so I switched to the version which took
ten minutes to write instead of five minutes to write, which was posted
here quite a while back.

And I think I'll pass. The term "reply" normally carries connotations
of some kind of relevance or lucidity, which I am not sure are applicable.

<262e34a1-0e34-47b2-9fbc-459a25f09473@q16g2000yqq.googlegroups.com>

is a follow-up to your comment about your parents being math teachers,
and has a specific list of questions.

If he'd answered my specific, technically relevant, questions back when I
first tried to engage him, I *might* care. As is, I have pretty much no
interest. I'll consider questions addressed to me by people that I believe
to be sane.

[*] Or not.

Yeah, that.

-s

 

[Seebs]

I guess I'm not quite understanding how you load something once and
reuse it -- I mean, where/how does it stick around? -- but the problem
may be that I'm thinking in terms of a typical shell environment, in
which once a process/program ends, its resources are freed, while you
(or whoever) are talking about -- something else.

Right. A typical example would be, say, a long-running daemon, such as a
web server, which can load a script environment once, then pass new hunks
of data to the already-loaded script.

An example that may affect more people is SpamAssassin, which has a very
expensive hunk of startup which is paid once to start a daemon, which clients
then connect to, so the clients don't have to do all that work.

Someone else -- spinoza1111 maybe -- mentioned TSR, which I guess
is how one would accomplish this in, um, DOS maybe? (an environment
I know next to nothing about), but -- is there a UNIX equivalent?
I guess shared libraries *might* sort of qualify, but isn't the
operating system allowed to remove shared-library code from memory
when there are no processes using it? Or is there a way to keep it
around .... (Hm, maybe explicitly managing "shared memory segments"?)

That wouldn't help, because the shared part isn't the expensive part to set
up. What you end up doing to reuse script fragments is some kind of ongoing
daemon -- which, it turns out, would be an atrociously poor fit for the
circumstances in which I wanted to do that string replacement.

I think you'll find that the *essential* objection to my solution is that
it was picked by me, and therefore is offensive to Nilges.

-s

 

[blmblm]

It's at least partly because *you* keep discussing it with him.

Well, could be -- but my point was not why the discussion was
taking place [*], but why it was taking place in *this* thread,
rather than in the thread Seebs started by posting a URL to the
code and asking for comments.

[*] And really, I think at least some of the actual discussion has
been at least close to on-topic -- idiomatic use of switch, for
example.

As for whether I should just stop replying to any of spinoza1111's
posts -- yeah well, I'll probably get there eventually.

 

[Seebs]

[*] And really, I think at least some of the actual discussion has
been at least close to on-topic -- idiomatic use of switch, for
example.

Exactly! To be sure, thus far, nearly every such conversation I've
seen involving Nilges has involved him saying something unambiguously
wrong and then being corrected, but since a lot of his mistakes are
similar to those newbies make, it could be pedagogically useful even
if it's not otherwise informative.

-s

 

[blmblm]

Right. A typical example would be, say, a long-running daemon, such as a
web server, which can load a script environment once, then pass new hunks
of data to the already-loaded script.

Okay, sure ....

An example that may affect more people is SpamAssassin, which has a very
expensive hunk of startup which is paid once to start a daemon, which clients
then connect to, so the clients don't have to do all that work.


That wouldn't help, because the shared part isn't the expensive part to set
up.

Well .... I think what I was thinking was that if you performed
JIT compilation on the script, you could cache the result in a
shared memory segment, and then subsequent calls to the script
could somehow use the compiled version. But I admit that I
haven't thought it through carefully, and stuff like this is
somewhat outside my supposed areas of expertise.

What you end up doing to reuse script fragments is some kind of ongoing
daemon --

Yeah, okay, I can sort of imagine ....

which, it turns out, would be an atrociously poor fit for the
circumstances in which I wanted to do that string replacement.

But what do you know -- you haven't taken a single CS course!

Come to think of it, my own educational record is probably lighter
on actual CS coursework than that of many people in my current
job (which mostly consists of teaching undergraduate CS courses).
So maybe I'm biased. (The temptation to continue digressing is
strong, but I'll resist.)

 

[Seebs]

Well .... I think what I was thinking was that if you performed
JIT compilation on the script, you could cache the result in a
shared memory segment, and then subsequent calls to the script
could somehow use the compiled version. But I admit that I
haven't thought it through carefully, and stuff like this is
somewhat outside my supposed areas of expertise.

Ahh, that could be done, I suppose. I don't think I've ever seen
it done, but it'd be possible.

But what do you know -- you haven't taken a single CS course!

The funny part, to me, is that the original objection was that I was an
ivory-tower sort who had too much academic background and not enough
experience with the fundamnetals.

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

Okay, sure ....



Well ....  I think what I was thinking was that if you performed
JIT compilation on the script, you could cache the result in a
shared memory segment, and then subsequent calls to the script
could somehow use the compiled version.  But I admit that I
haven't thought it through carefully, and stuff like this is
somewhat outside my supposed areas of expertise.

This solution would in fact be just as fast as Peter's incompetent
code.

Yeah, okay, I can sort of imagine ....


But what do you know -- you haven't taken a single CS course!

Indeed he hasn't.

Come to think of it, my own educational record is probably lighter
on actual CS coursework than that of many people in my current
job (which mostly consists of teaching undergraduate CS courses).
So maybe I'm biased.  (The temptation to continue digressing is
strong, but I'll resist.)

I did not complete the degree, just most of the work with an A*
average. Peter didn't even start and far worse, tends to target and
try to discredit mentors because he's secretly ashamed, in all
probability, of this lack.
Well, yes (addressed to Dweebach). At this point, and based on your
track record, you have no credibility.

 

[spinoza1111]

It's at least partly because *you* keep discussing it with him.

Well, could be -- but my point was not why the discussion was
taking place [*], but why it was taking place in *this* thread,
rather than in the thread Seebs started by posting a URL to the
code and asking for comments.

[*] And really, I think at least some of the actual discussion has
been at least close to on-topic -- idiomatic use of switch, for
example.

As for whether I should just stop replying to any ofspinoza1111's
posts -- yeah well, I'll probably get there eventually.  

And so you sweetly enable. Useless woman.

 

[spinoza1111]

[ snip ]

Well, a typical thing would be, say you want to run the same script hundreds
of times, you'd load the script once and then execute it hundreds of times.
(This is how any performance-oriented implementation of Ruby on Rails will
do it, for instance.)

I guess I'm not quite understanding how you load something once and
reuse it -- I mean, where/how does it stick around? -- but the problem
may be that I'm thinking in terms of a typical shell environment, in
which once a process/program ends, its resources are freed, while you
(or whoever) are talking about -- something else.  

Anyone who knows anything about programming knows that a shell
processor can be called through an API. Seebach wanted to write a C
program because he thinks he's a programmer. We often see newbies do
this.

Someone else --spinoza1111maybe -- mentioned TSR, which I guess
is how one would accomplish this in, um, DOS maybe? (an environment
I know next to nothing about), but -- is there a UNIX equivalent?
I guess shared libraries *might* sort of qualify, but isn't the
operating system allowed to remove shared-library code from memory
when there are no processes using it?  Or is there a way to keep it
around ....  (Hm, maybe explicitly managing "shared memory segments"?)

(Off-topic, but not as badly as some recent posts.)

[ snip ]

 

[spinoza1111]

Right.  A typical example would be, say, a long-running daemon, such as a
web server, which can load a script environment once, then pass new hunks
of data to the already-loaded script.

An example that may affect more people is SpamAssassin, which has a very
expensive hunk of startup which is paid once to start a daemon, which clients
then connect to, so the clients don't have to do all that work.


That wouldn't help, because the shared part isn't the expensive part to set
up.  What you end up doing to reuse script fragments is some kind of ongoing
daemon -- which, it turns out, would be an atrociously poor fit for the
circumstances in which I wanted to do that string replacement.

I think you'll find that the *essential* objection to my solution is that
it was picked by me, and therefore is offensive to Nilges.

No, it was incompetently coded. You started by using strchr and not
strstr, and I pointed out that you could have a %, found by strchr,
not followed by s. In response you made some sort of patch, but had
you used strstr you would have had a working version faster.

As to why on earth you would post some piece of fast and dirty crap
here, of the sort we've all had to do, it seems to me that you felt
you needed to establish or re-establish credibility. You failed to do
so.

This is rather the place for what you'd regard, with scorn, as
"academic and useless" experiments, including trying to get by, using
Nul terminated strings to be certain, without string.h.

This is because computer science is necessarily learning how we got
here. Something you will never understand.