shorten string length by 1

[Keith Thompson]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 08:03:09 GMT, in comp.lang.c , Keith Thompson


such as the one under discussion.

If you were just talking about the particular case under discussion,
I'd agree with you.

And even setting aside the context,
I still don't consider a character array with only a null in it to be
a string. YMMV.

That's just wrong. The definition of "string" in C99 7.1.1p1 could be
interpreted to exclude empty strings, but it's obviously the intent
that the empty string is a string. If you want to refer to non-empty
strings, find another word.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gerg=F6_Barany?=]

How so? The context was how to shorten a string by one character. I'm
unsure how a zero length string can be valid for that operation. And
FWIW I consider it very odd to think of a string with zero length as
being a valid one.

How would you implement this shortening operation, then? Surely
shortening a one-character string by one character would yield the empty
string. But that cannot be, since the empty string is invalid...


Gergo

 

[Richard Bos]

How would you implement this shortening operation, then? Surely
shortening a one-character string by one character would yield the empty
string. But that cannot be, since the empty string is invalid...

The solution is obvious: a one-character string is not a valid string,
either.

Richard

 

[Alan Balmer]

The solution is obvious: a one-character string is not a valid string,
either.

Making it trivial to prove by induction that there are no valid
strings.

 

[Richard Bos]

Making it trivial to prove by induction that there are no valid
strings.

Isn't life beautifully simple, sometimes <g>?

Richard

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Making it trivial to prove by induction that there are no valid
strings.

Er, only if your induction process is broken. The same logic
demonstrates that all numbers are equal to zero, and that there are no
humans in the galaxy.

 

[Alan Balmer]

Er, only if your induction process is broken. The same logic
demonstrates that all numbers are equal to zero, and that there are no
humans in the galaxy.

Of course.

It's not the induction process - it's the premise.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Of course.

It's not the induction process - it's the premise.

For myself, I prefer D Adams' proof of the above.