Re:C’s Biggest Mistake (2009)
by erik_seaberg on Sunday September 13, 2020 @02:11AM
(#24458781)
The weird thing is that the compiler obviously knows how to copy an array, because you can pass a copy of a struct that contains an array. I have a vague impression that early versions of C couldn't pass either structs or arrays, only scalars and pointers.
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| on HN ]
You are correct. This is briefly mentioned on https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html:
> While [the first edition of K&R] foreshadowed the newer approach to structures, only after it was published did the language support assigning them, passing them to and from functions, [...]