[Info-vax] OS implementation languages

Arne Vajhøj arne at vajhoej.dk
Sat Sep 9 17:44:05 EDT 2023


On 9/9/2023 2:44 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2023-09-09 19:25, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 9/9/2023 12:53 PM, bill wrote:
>>> On 9/9/2023 12:14 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> On 9/9/2023 11:45 AM, bill wrote:
>>>>> Nice thought, but the particular problem I was fighting was
>>>>> inherent to PHP and the programmer can only stop it by using
>>>>> a better tool.
>>>>
>>>> You are aware that PHP is Turing complete?
>>>
>>> Which means what in the concept of security?  It has nothing
>>> to do with the syntax or even the function of the programs
>>> written with it.
>>
>> It means that you did not have to rewrite in another language to
>> fix the problem.
> 
> That definitely does not neccesarily follow.
> 
> Consider for example C and some language like BASIC, which have full 
> control over strings.
> Both are turing complete. But if you want to avoid the problem of 
> strings being handled as pointers to chunks of memory terminated by a 
> NUL, then you need to move away from C (to for example BASIC).
> You cannot "fix" the problem of how C looks at strings.
> 
> The turing complete aspect have nothing to do with that.

I cannot follow your argument.

Being turing complete means that it can do anything that
the abstract turing machine and any other turing complete
language can do.

It does not mean that something is easy or best practice
or anything else.

I consider C strings a bad design. But I cannot imagine
any problem that could not be solved with C. In most cases
I think there would be better languages that will make it
possible to implement the functionality faster and
with less risk of errors. But it is still possible to
do it in C.

Arne







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