lclint-interest message 74

From espie@clipper.ens.fr Mon May 13 18:51:07 1996
From: espie@clipper.ens.fr (Marc Espie)
Subject: Introducing myself
To: lclint-interest@larch.lcs.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 00:39:32 +0200 (MET DST)
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Hello everybody.

Well, I've been lurking on the mailing-list for two weeks and plaguing
David Evans with bug reports/strange behavior of lclint.

I am working on a PhD thesis which has nothing to do with lclint and
vaguely to do with computer science (more maths than CS, actually---shortest
paths in vector metric spaces).

I also am a compulsive programmer. I can't help but writing programs.
My favorite languages include icon, perl, PostScript and C... 
in fact, I mostly use C when there is no other choice left (speed, system
access plus portability are great assets, after all).

I have four or five projects of moderate length (between 100Kbytes and 2Mbytes
of source) which I try to maintain: one in Icon, one in composite 
perl/PostScript/C (trying to get rid of the C) and two in C.

`tracker' is available to the world at large. It plays some weird 
amiga soundfiles on Unix systems, and strives at maximal portability.
(try any aminet site, ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/misc/unix/tracker-4.31.tar.Z
for instance).

Needless to say, this is where lclint comes in. C becomes completely
inadequate to handle large projects around the half-mega byte zone 
(your mileage may vary, but that's my personal experience).

This is not exactly `legacy code', as tracker is mostly clean ANSI code, 
but since it has not been designed with lclint in mind, the conversion
proves to be interesting. Right now, I don't know if I'm correcting bugs
or learning rather interesting (and surprising) things about my C coding
habits.

I ran into lots of trouble since my C code is portable, but not strict
ANSI, so pulling real system headers in was a must. Thanks to Dave for
his tremendous help !

I am afraid that the more interesting benefits of lclint (abstract datatypes)
won't come into play for me until somewhat later, after I've rewritten a
large portion of my code.

-- 
microsoft network is EXPLICITLY forbidden to redistribute this message.
`Moon purismu powa, make up.... Tsuki ni kawatte, oshiokiyo !'
	Marc Espie (Marc.Espie@ens.fr)