errata.txt

The art and science of c_source code!

File: errata.txt
Last modified on Thu Oct 20 14:13:14 1994 by eroberts
________________________________________________________________________

This file describes the most serious errors that have been uncovered in
the text.  These errors will be corrected in the second printing.

Page 124, second-to-last text line before Figure 4-6:
  The sentence beginning with "Duplication of code" is missing a "not"
  that renders the whole idea meaningless.  The sentence should read as
  follows:

     Duplication of code presents a serious maintenance problem
     because subsequent edits to one set of statements might not be
     made to the other.

Page 182, second and third paragraphs:
  The name of the function given in the exercise does not match the name
  in the code, which is correct.  Every instance of GetYesNoResponse in
  these paragraphs should change to GetYesOrNo, as follows:

     Write a predicate function GetYesOrNo that takes a prompt
     string as its argument and displays that prompt as a question
     to the user.  If the user responds with the word yes,
     GetYesOrNo should return TRUE.  If the user responds with no,
     GetYesOrNo should return FALSE.  If the user gives any other
     response, the function should display a message informing the
     user of the legal responses and then ask the question again.
       Given the GetYesOrNo function, you could then change the
     game-playing loop to

Page 241, first paragraph:
  I changed the constants in the code without correcting the paragraph
  that talks about them.  The code is correct, and the first three
  sentences in the paragraph need to change as follows:

     Before you start writing the actual program, however, notice
     that this specific house has many attributes that define its
     shape.  For example, the house is 3.0 inches wide.  The
     distance from the ground to the attic is 2.0 inches, with
     another 0.7 inches to the peak of the roof.

Page 503, fourth line in Table 14-1:
  The first word in the fourth entry should be strncat, not strncpy,
  which was already listed on line 2.  Thus the first four lines of the
  table should read:

     strcpy(dst, src)      Copies characters from src into dst
     strncpy(dst, src, n)  Copies at most n characters from src into dst
     strcat(dst, src)      Appends characters from src to the end of dst
     strncat(dst, src, n)  Appends at most n characters from src to dst

Page 552, last text paragraph before sample run:
  This paragraph uses ReadLine, readline.c, and readline.h when it
  should be using ReadFile, readfile.c, and readfile.h.  The corrected
  paragraph looks like this:

     Put the implementation of ReadFile in a separate readfile.c
     file and design a readfile.h interface that gives clients
     access to it.  Use the readfile.h interface to write a main
     program that displays the lines in a file in reverse order.
     For example, given the prospero.txt file as input, the output
     of the program should be

Page 603, second paragraph:
  Because of a last-minute change in the text, my math is off by a
  factor of 10 in this paragraph.  The two instances of 100,000 should
  each be 10,000, so that the paragraph reads as follows:

     If you know someone who is willing to write a check for the
     entire $1,000,000, your job is easy.  On the other hand, you
     may not be lucky enough to have friends who are generous
     millionaires.  In that case, you must raise the $1,000,000 in
     smaller amounts.  If the average contribution to your
     organization is $100, you might choose a different tack: call
     10,000 friends and ask each of them for $100.  But then again,
     you probably don't have 10,000 friends.  So what can you do?

Page 660, second marginal entry from the end:
  The word NULL must be entirely in uppercase Courier.  It's correct in
  the text, but wrong in the margin.

Page 663, second line on the page:
  The arguments to putchar are incorrect.  The first two lines should
  look like this:

     int putc(char ch, FILE *outfile);
     int putchar(char ch);

Page 665, last entry on the page:
  The entry for atan2 is wrong and should be replaced as follows:

     int atan2(double y, double x);
     This function returns the angle formed between the x-axis and
     the line extending from the origin through the point (x, y).
     As with the other trigonometric functions, the angle is
     expressed in radians.  Note that y appears first in the
     argument list.