When the math nerds refer to a counting system, they use the word base. “We count in base 10,” they proclaim, adding, “Decimal” to sound important. Surely, these are the miracles of mathematics.
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The C language uses radians instead of degrees when calculating angles. Humans should use radians as well, as they’re logical and easy to work with (radians, not humans). What surprises me, however, is that the C library lacks a defined constant for making the degree-radian conversion.
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Way back in April, I concluded my series on the “raw” file functions with a program that created a new file — but one that had no permissions. Thanks to input from readers and research into file-permission functions, I have a solution to the puzzle.
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In Unix-like operating systems, the chmod shell command alters a file’s permissions. From the C library, the chmod() function does the same thing.
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The value returned as a file’s inode mode is difficult to interpret, as covered in last week’s Lesson. That is, unless you use the macros and defined constants available in the sys/stat.h header file.
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All files carry with them something called an inode, which contains file data beyond the file’s name and its contents. The inode references the file’s size, its timestamps, and the file type or mode. It’s this file mode that determines how the file is used, which users can access the file, and what can be done with the file when accessed.
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Often times I poke into the C language, removing its crude veneer to look deeper into its guts — the digital protomatter that C and all programming languages devolve into when processed by the CPU. One of the things I discovered is that there is no solid limit to the number of arguments a function can have.
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