Should you free your pointers?

[James Waldby]

I must admit I didn't notice that he changed the word from "asked" to
"answered".

Now that I've noticed, I'm not sure I've ever seen FAQ expanded to
"Frequently Answered Questions" rather than "Frequently Asked
Questions", and I still have no idea what Michael is getting at. Is he
suggesting that Eric should have done something other than cite the FAQ?

Michael Press has expanded upon his original statement by the pellucid
reply, "Um, that is what I am implying" to your comment "Um, it still
is", and by the eloquent remark, "Reminding ES of this matter" in
response to your comment, "I'm afraid I've missed whatever point you're
making". Given the clarity and eloquence of those replies, how can
you ask more of Press?

Sorry if I'm being dense.

Ok.

 

[Michael Press]

I must admit I didn't notice that he changed the word from "asked" to
"answered".

Now that I've noticed, I'm not sure I've ever seen FAQ expanded
to "Frequently Answered Questions" rather than "Frequently Asked
Questions", and I still have no idea what Michael is getting at.
Is he suggesting that Eric should have done something other than
cite the FAQ?

Sorry if I'm being dense.

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

 

[Michael Press]

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

A web search for "frequently answered questions"
finds a myriad of sites where the list of frequently
answered questions is titled "Frequently Answered Questions."

 

[Seebs]

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.

Huh! Before my time, I guess.

I would argue that given the existence of a FAQ, most questions on it
are much more frequently asked than answered.

-s

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

FWIW, it's been "Asked" for as long as I can remember (and I was on
usenet by 1980). Checking, the jargon file has "Asked".

 

[Alan Curry]

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

I don't remember that, but I do remember "FAQ" being singular, and a regular
posting containing FAQs and answers being called a "FAQL" (FAQ List). I'm not
sure when that died out.

 

[J. J. Farrell]

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

Evidence please. I've known it to be an abbreviation of "Frequently
Asked Questions" for several decades, this is the first time I've seen a
suggestion that it is "Frequently Answered Questions".

 

[Billy Mays]

Evidence please. I've known it to be an abbreviation of "Frequently
Asked Questions" for several decades, this is the first time I've seen a
suggestion that it is "Frequently Answered Questions".

I think "Asked" fits better since the complement would be Infrequently
Asked Questions rather than Frequently Unanswered Questions.

 

[Shao Miller]

Evidence please. I've known it to be an abbreviation of "Frequently
Asked Questions" for several decades, this is the first time I've seen a
suggestion that it is "Frequently Answered Questions".

For what it's worth, Mr. J. de Boyne Pollard prefers "Frequently Given
Answers"[1]. I can't say if that's at all relevant.

[1] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/

 

[Michael Press]

Evidence please. I've known it to be an abbreviation of "Frequently
Asked Questions" for several decades, this is the first time I've seen a
suggestion that it is "Frequently Answered Questions".

The Wikipedia article on FAQ documents this usage.

A web search for "frequently answered questions"
turns up a myriad of sites where the list of frequently
answered questions is titled "Frequently Answered Questions."

 

[Michael Press]

I think "Asked" fits better since the complement would be Infrequently
Asked Questions rather than Frequently Unanswered Questions.

There are frequently asked questions that
never get into the FAQL such as

"Are you serious?"
"What's your point?"
"Is it congenital or were you dropped on your head?"

 

[James Kuyper]

On 06/27/2011 03:59 PM, Michael Press wrote:
....

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

According to Google Groups, the oldest usenet message containing
"Frequently Answered Questions" was dated 1989-03-22. It could only find
14 such messages between then and 1991-01-1.

The oldest message it reports containing the phrase "Frequently Asked
Questions" dates back to 1981-07-13, and there are 11,200 such messages
between then and 1984-01-01. The very first such message connects that
phrase to the acronym "FAQ", contradicting the chronology given for the
birth of that acronym in Wikipedia's entry for "FAQ".

Google Groups' query engine is extremely flaky, but these numbers and
dates are at least suggestive of a different history than the one you
describe.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

The Wikipedia article on FAQ documents this usage.

A web search for "frequently answered questions"
turns up a myriad of sites where the list of frequently
answered questions is titled "Frequently Answered Questions."

Hmmm.... googling frequently answered questions turns up 5,190,000
hits -- and the first one is a page titled "Frequently Questioned
Answers".

frequently asked questions turns up 222,000,000 hits.

Of course, the claim is that FAQ originally stood for "answered", so
relative use now is pretty much irrelevant.

 

[David Mathog]

One reason that I sometimes bother is that it's very clear that a
program that frees all of its memory does not have a memory leak
(when I use a tool that reports memory statistics at program
exit).

Exactly. But it isn't hard to have it both ways. In one of my
programs during development it looks like:

/* For memory leak testing
*/
free()
free()
....

and in production

/* For memory leak testing
free()
free()
....
*/

This could (maybe should) be done with an ifdef too. Anyway, this
particular program has complex memory structures, so it is easy to
introduce memory leaks and access violations, and the way I find these
is by running a large test suite using valgrind. (As opposed to the
same large testsuite without valgrind for routine testing.)

As an aside, finding memory leaks in tests that are forced to exit
through:

/* awful unrecoverable problem, exit immediately */
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);

is problematical, since at the exit point the code will rarely have
access to all of the data structures that (might) need to be freed.
The end result
is that in those sections of the testsuite under valgrind it looks
like a memory leak whether or not there really is one.

Regards,

David Mathog

 

[J. J. Farrell]

The Wikipedia article on FAQ documents this usage.

Not quite - it claims "Originally the term FAQ referred to the
Frequently Answered Question itself", but with no citation of any sort
to support the claim, and without even identifying the claimant.

Wikipedia does attribute the origin of the acronym FAQ to Eugene Maya on
the SPACE mailing list, and http://www.islandone.org/SpaceDigest/
confirms that Maya originally used the term to mean Frequently Answered
Questions. Since there are records of the term Frequently Asked
Questions which pre-date that by some years, I'd be surprised if that
really was the first time the acronym was used. Quite possible though.

The Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about people attempting to
stem the tide in the supposed change of meaning - where do you get that
from?

A web search for "frequently answered questions"
turns up a myriad of sites where the list of frequently
answered questions is titled "Frequently Answered Questions."

A vastly smaller myriad than that turned up by searching for "frequently
asked questions", neither of which points has any relevance to the
question of which term was the originally intended by the FAQ abbreviation.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Not quite - it claims "Originally the term FAQ referred to the
Frequently Answered Question itself", but with no citation of any sort
to support the claim, and without even identifying the claimant.

Wikipedia does attribute the origin of the acronym FAQ to Eugene Maya
on the SPACE mailing list, and http://www.islandone.org/SpaceDigest/
confirms that Maya originally used the term to mean Frequently
Answered Questions. Since there are records of the term Frequently
Asked Questions which pre-date that by some years, I'd be surprised if
that really was the first time the acronym was used. Quite possible
though.

The Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about people attempting to
stem the tide in the supposed change of meaning - where do you get
that from?

<snip>

Now, *this* is how one attacks a wikipedia article: not by making a
blanket "wikipedia is unreliable" statment, but by pointing to flaws in
the article's attributions, by pointing out that the article doesn't
quite say what was claimed, and by pointing to better evidence from
elsewhere.

In other words, the way any other argument should be attacked.

 

[DDD]

In the case where you know that your program will be terminating after
it is done using the pointers, should you even bother freeing the space up?

Example:
int main(void)
{
     int i, * data;
     data = malloc(sizeof(int) * 100);
     if(data) {
         for(i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
             data = i'
         }
     }
     /* free(data) ? */
     return 0;

}

In common, you malloc, then you free.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Originally FAQ stood for frequently answered questions.
Most people do not seem to know that, even more than
I thought going in. During the transition, some people
attempted to stem the tide.

Ok, I understand that you're saying that "FAQ" originally stood for
"Frequently Answered Questions". It's not clear whether that's
accurate or not. But whether you're right about that or not,
exactly what point were you trying to make? Does it really matter
whether the 'A' stands for "Asked" or "Answered"?

Eric replied to a question by citing <http://www.c-faq.com/>.
The context implied to me that you were criticizing what Eric did.
Was that your intent? If so, what should he have done? Or was
your point entirely about what the 'A' stands for?

 

[Michael Press]

On 06/27/2011 03:59 PM, Michael Press wrote:
...

According to Google Groups, the oldest usenet message containing
"Frequently Answered Questions" was dated 1989-03-22. It could only find
14 such messages between then and 1991-01-1.

The oldest message it reports containing the phrase "Frequently Asked
Questions" dates back to 1981-07-13, and there are 11,200 such messages
between then and 1984-01-01. The very first such message connects that
phrase to the acronym "FAQ", contradicting the chronology given for the
birth of that acronym in Wikipedia's entry for "FAQ".

Google Groups' query engine is extremely flaky, but these numbers and
dates are at least suggestive of a different history than the one you
describe.

Yes, so they are.

 

[Jed]

"Should you free your pointers?"

Yes, because, then at least pointers, will be free.