Friday 3 August 2012

C programming forgetfulness

There are a few nooks and crannies in C which I have to revise when I return to it.  StackOverflow covers them, once you eventually sort through the chaff there:

  • A struct which can have pointers to other versions of the struct (link).
  • Avoiding using void * pointer in list nodes (link).
  • Writing cleaner loops with the comma operator (link).
  • Recursive macro expansion and the # and ## operators (link).
I did a quick google for a wiki or web pages that summarised similar tips, but wasn't able to find anything suitable.

Finding help from StackOverflow is no longer as easy as it once was.  When googling for information, I now have to dig through sometimes dozens of low quality question pages.  Often the useful answer is not the accepted one, or there would be a secondary lower-voted answer which would link to a useful answer given to an earlier similar question.  Of course, it is still the best place for answers, but I think that I need to find a better way of finding them.

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