🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1829@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> cmdglv@vaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu writes:
>
>      Here's a fun little bug that I just discovered in Microsoft C V6.0.
>When I run the following program:
>
>                       #include <stdio.h>
>                       void main() {
>                          printf("Question marks: '??'");
>                       }
>
>I get the following output:
>
>                       Question marks: '^
>
>     It's not quite what I expected.  And it breaks a whole series of 
>programs I have that use quoted question marks within strings :(
>
>P.S., Does anybody else out there resent being patronized, belittled, and
>disbelieved when they try to report a bug to Microsoft Technical Support?
>

MS Tech support probably receives much more than its share of "bug" reports.
What you have stumbled upon is not a bug, it is a feature.  Since not
all terminals (outside of the UNIX/C/DEC,SUN,AT&T world) can do all of
the characters required by C, the ANSI standard provides a method for
specifying certain characters by sequences known as trigraphs.  All
trigraphs begin with a ??.  The trigraph for ^ is (yes, you guessed it)
??'.  See A12.1 of K&R 2nd Ed. 

Neil



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Neil I.  Weisenfeld                    | InterNet: weisen@eniac.seas.upenn.edu
Dept. of Computer and Info. Sciences   | USPS: I dunno, I'm moving...
University of Pennsylvania             | PENNmail: Don't even try it...
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