Thursday, September 18, 2014

Digest for comp.lang.c++@googlegroups.com - 6 updates in 3 topics

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Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se>: Sep 18 02:56PM

On Thu, 2014-09-18, JiiPee wrote:
> Okey, but I think that is more like a question that do we need C type
> arrays anymore at all?
 
Because of C compatibility, and because people are used to them.
std::vector and std::array takes care of most other uses.
 
However, that doesn't mean I don't want to write:
 
int foo(const int* p)
{
return p[42];
}
 
I see that as pointer arithmetics, not arrays.
 
/Jorgen
 
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
David Harmon <source@netcom.com>: Sep 18 10:21AM -0700

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:59:11 +0100 in comp.lang.c++, JiiPee
<no@notvalid.com> wrote,
>But listening experts they always say that we should not use the old C
>array but rather vector. So why String is not done like:
 
string is older than vector.
Paavo Helde <myfirstname@osa.pri.ee>: Sep 18 01:15PM -0500


>|This will return char* :
> (|char| *)(&str[0])
 
&vector[0] can be used for both const and mutable access, depending on
whether the vector itself is accessed as const or not.
 
In C++11 there is also a new data() member function of std::vector, which
does the exact same thing, except that it also works for empty vectors
(&vector[0] causes undefined behavior if the vector is empty).
 
Cheers
Paavo
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>: Sep 18 04:23PM +0200

On 17/09/14 23:58, Christopher Pisz wrote:
> number of people saying things like, "strong evidence" and "overwhelming
> evidence", but I myself have never in my entire lifetime actually seen
> any evidence, and never will, because it is not observable.
 
There are vast quantities of evidence for evolution - both gradual
evolution within a species, and jumps between species. (Contrary to
your ideas, these are not two different kinds of evolution, nor are
either of them remotely controversial amongst scientists. The
occasional crackpot with a Ph.D. but no understanding does not count as
"scientific controversy".)
 
 
First, lets look at some simple examples that you will already know:
 
Every schoolchild who studies biology beyond a certain level has done a
fruit-fly breeding experiment. Although the criteria for survival to
the next generation is guided by a human, it is still evolution.
 
Changes to bacteria and viruses to beat drugs or improve their infection
rates are the result of evolution.
 
Selective breeding in animals and plants is evolution (again, it is
humans who decide who survives - but it is still evolution).
 
 
Longer-term examples with direct evidence require looking at fossils and
DNA to see how animals and plants have changed through time. I would
not expect you to have looked at such evidence personally, though I
expect you to be as capable of googling for "evidence for evolution" as
anyone else.
 
It is rare to find "intermediary" fossils that are half-way between one
long-term stable species and another, simply because such periods of
major change are short compared to the long periods of relative
stability in a species. But many such fossils have been found,
including within the homonoid group. There are also a few "living
fossils" in this category, such as the African Lung Fish - this is a
fish that lives mainly underwater and breaths with gills, but it also
has rudimentary lungs and limbs to allow short and graceless periods out
of water. This does /not/ mean that land vertebrates evolved from
African Lung Fish - merely that they evolved from something quite similar.
 
Indirect evidence is all around. A famous example is Darwin's moth -
when researching on Galápagos (collecting data that would inspire his
work on evolution), he discovered an orchid with a particularly long
thin flower. Wallace (another evolution pioneer) predicted that a type
of moth would exist that had evolved a matching length of proboscis,
though he never saw one himself - they were not found until many decades
later. This demonstrates the predictive power of evolution.
 
Then there is the DNA evidence. Quite simply, if two species share a
part of their DNA, then they will almost certainly have evolved from a
common ancestor (there are other ways to mix DNA between species than
through reproduction, which complicates things a bit, and there can be
plenty of cross-reproduction during jumps in species). The more DNA
they share, the closer they are in ancestry.
 
 
There is also endless circumstantial evidence. When you look at the
human eye, it is possible to follow the trail backwards through many
other species (some still living but genetically close to our ancestor,
others extinct) to see how the eye we have now has evolved and changed
over time. Such trails explain the "mistakes" or design flaws (of which
the human eye has many), as well as "evolutionary leftovers" such as our
tail, our appendix, and our gills (which we have for a time as
foetuses). The development of the human foetus (and those of other
animals) actually gives some insight into our heritage - it goes through
periods with gills, with a long tail, and with fur.
 
 
Yes, evolution /is/ observable - and while most of the evidence is from
the past, there are clear signs of how it is still happening today.
(Humans are not a "peak" of evolution or somehow "at the top" - we are
evolving now as we have been in the past.)
 
You just have to open your eyes and open your mind, and be willing to
look at the facts.
Christopher Pisz <nospam@notanaddress.com>: Sep 18 10:05AM -0500

On 9/18/2014 12:10 AM, seeplus wrote:
 
> This really looks like we have evolved from those ugly common ancestors at the zoo, right?
 
> Or did that ADAM man just get stuck with these useless bits by a clumsy (pre 98) designer.
> Talk about haphazard edit and continue designing.
 
copy-paste
 
No, the human fetus never develops gills, tail or a yolk sac, as some
have claimed. This supposed evidence of man's evolution from animals has
been resoundingly proven utterly false. This is yet another great
evolutionary myth that refuses to die, despite total lack of evidence,
and its birth in deception. It was very important in the early promotion
of evolutionism.
 
Unfortunately, many people still believe this erroneous evolutionary
theory that was once widely taught in schools and still shows up in
museums and books.
 
How the myth spread | Vestigial organs theory | Tails | Yolk Sacs |
Gills | Retracing human "evolutionary development" | The abortion
connection | Have any humans ever been born with gills?
 
Spreading a Popular Myth
 
In 1986, the Reader's Digest Book of Facts published an erroneous "fact"
that further spread a popular piece of evolutionary misinformation. They
told readers that a human embryo re-traces the history of evolution: it
develops slits in the neck like fish gills, it has a tail, and so on.
This "fact" is so wrong that the idea was discredited and thrown out
decades ago.
 
Earlier, this erroneous "fact" was spread widely by the once-popular
child development author Dr. Spock:
"Each child as he develops is retracing the whole history of mankind,
physically and spiritually, step by step. A baby starts off in the womb
as a single tiny cell, just the way the first living thing appeared in
the ocean. Weeks later, as he lies in the amniotic fluid of the womb, he
has gills like a fish…"[1]
 
Where did all this erroneous idea get its start? It began with
Evolutionist and German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in his 1876 book General
Morphology of Organisms. With supreme audacity it was called the
"Biogenetic Law." It was a fraud from the beginning. Haeckel
fraudulently presented altered, misleading and misinterpreted evidence.
[2] Some of the key details of his embryo drawings were wrong—purposely
altered to make a case for Evolution where none existed. Yet, how many
people still know this? Of Haeckel, Richard Milton says, "No errant
scientist has been more thoroughly disowned by his colleagues. …The
biogenetic law is no longer taken seriously by embryologists."[3]
 
Early Human Development Consider the picture above your first "baby
picture." You start off as a little round ball of unformed substance.
Then gradually arms, legs, eyes, and all your other parts appear. At one
month, you're not quite as charming as you're going to be, and here's
where the evolutionist says, "There's no evidence of creation in the
human embryo. Otherwise, why would a human being have a yolk sac like a
chicken does and a tail like a lizard does? Why would a human being have
gill slits like a fish does? An intelligent creator should have known
that human beings don't need those things."
 
THE THEORY OF VESTIGIAL ORGANS—Evolutionary leftovers
 
Well, there they are, "yolk sac, gill slits, and a tail." Why are they
there? What's a creationist going to say? The evolutionist believes
these structures are there only as useless leftovers or "vestiges," of
our evolutionary ancestry—remainders of the times when our ancestors
were only fish and reptiles.
 
The concept of vestigial organs even resulted in cases of "evolutionary
medical malpractice." Young children once had their healthy and helpful,
disease-fighting tonsils removed because of the widespread belief that
they were only useless vestiges. That idea actually slowed down
scientific research for many years. If you believe something is a
useless, nonfunctional leftover of evolution, then you don't bother to
find out what it does.
 
Fortunately, other scientists didn't take that view. Sure enough,
studies have shown that essentially all 180 organs once listed as
evolutionary vestiges have quite important functions in human beings.
 
THE "YOLK SAC"—evidence of the Creator's design, not a vestigial organ
 
Take the so-called "yolk sac," for instance. In chickens, the yolk
contains much of the food that the chick depends on for growth. But we,
on the other hand, grow attached to our mothers, and they nourish us.
Does that mean the fetus's so-called "yolk sac" can be cut off from the
human embryo because it isn't needed? Not at all. The "yolk sac" is the
source of the human embryo's first blood cells, and death would result
without it.
 
Now here's an engineering problem for you. In the adult, you want to
have the blood cells formed inside the bone marrow. That makes good
sense, because the blood cells are very sensitive to radiation damage
and bone would offer them some protection. But you need blood in order
to form the bone marrow that later on is going to form blood. So, where
do you get the blood first? Why not use a structure similar to the yolk
sac in chickens? The DNA and protein for making it are "common stock"
building materials. And, since it lies conveniently outside the embryo,
it can easily be discarded after it has served its temporary-but
vital-function.
 
Notice, this is exactly what we would expect as evidence of good
creative design and engineering practice. Suppose you were in the
bridge-building business, and you were interviewing a couple of
engineers to determine whom you wanted to hire. One fellow says, "Each
bridge I build will be entirely different from all others." Proudly he
tells you "Each bridge will be made using different materials and
different processes so that no one will ever be able to see any
similarity between the bridges I build." How does that sound?
 
Now the next fellow comes in and says, "Well, out back is your yard and
I saw a supply of I-beams and various sized heavy bolts and cables. We
can use those to span either a river or the San Francisco Bay. I can
adapt the same parts and processes to meet a wide variety of needs.
You'll be able to see a theme and a variation in my bridge building, and
others can see the stamp of authorship in our work." Which fellow would
you hire?
 
As Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith pointed out, we normally recognize in human
engineers the principles of creative economy and variations on a theme.
That's what we see in human embryonic development. The same kind of
structure that can provide food and blood cells to a chicken embryo can
be used to supply blood cells (all that's needed) for a human embryo.
Rather than reflecting time and chance, adapting similar structures to a
variety of needs seems to reflect creation.
 
THE TRUTH ABOUT "GILL" SLITS
 
The same is true of the so-called "gill slits." In the human embryo at
one month, there are wrinkles (flexion folds) in the skin where the
"throat pouches" grow out. Once in a while, one of these pouches will
break through, and a child will be born with a small hole in the neck.
That's when we find out for sure that these structures are not gill
slits. If the opening were really part of a gill, if it really were a
"throwback to the fish stage," then there would be blood vessels all
around it, as if it were going to absorb oxygen from water as a gill
does. But there is no such structure. We simply don't have the DNA
instructions for forming gills.
 
Unfortunately, some babies are born with three eyes or one eye. That
doesn't mean, of course, that we evolved from something with one eye or
three eyes. It's simply a mistake in the normal program for human
development, and it emphasizes how perfect our design features and
operation must be for life to continue.
 
The throat (or pharyngeal) grooves and pouches, falsely called "gill
slit," are not mistakes in human development. They develop into
absolutely essential parts of human anatomy—the lower jaw, tongue,
thymus gland, the parathyroid, etc. The middle ear canals come from the
second pouches, and the parathyroid and thymus glands come from the
third and fourth.
 
Without a thymus, we would lose half our immune systems. Without the
parathyroids, we would be unable to regulate calcium balance and could
not even survive. Another pouch, thought to be vestigial by
evolutionists until just recently, becomes a gland that assists in
calcium balance. Far from being useless evolutionary vestiges, then,
these so-called "gill slits" are quite essential for distinctively human
development.
 
As with "yolk sacs," "gill slit" formation represents an ingenious and
adaptable solution to a difficult engineering problem. How can a small,
round egg cell be turned into an animal or human being with a digestive
tube and various organs inside a body cavity? The answer is to have the
little ball (or flat sheet in some organisms) "swallow itself," forming
a tube which then "buds off" other tubes and pouches. The anterior
pituitary, lungs, urinary bladder, and parts of the liver and pancreas
develop in this way.
 
In fish, gills develop from such processes, and in human beings, the ear
canals, parathyroid, and thymus glands develop. Following DNA
instructions in their respective egg cells, fish and human beings each
use a similar process to develop their distinctive features.
 
THE TRUTH ABOUT HUMAN "TAILS"
 
True Early Human Development What about the "tail"? Some of you have
heard that man has a "tail bone" (also called a coccyx), and that the
only reason we have it is to remind us that our ancestors had tails. You
can test this idea yourself, although I don't recommend it. If you think
the coccyx is useless, fall down the stairs and land on it. (Some of you
may have actually done that-unintentionally, I'm sure!) What happens?
You can't stand up; you can't sit down; you can't lie down; you can't
roll over. You can hardly move without pain. In one sense, the coccyx is
one of the most important bones in the whole body. It's an important
point of muscle attachment required for our distinctive upright posture
(and also for defecation, but I'll say no more about that.)
 
So again, far from being a useless evolutionary leftover, the coccyx is
quite important in human development. True, the end of the spine sticks
out noticeably in a one-month embryo, but that's because muscles and
limbs don't develop until stimulated by the spine (see above picture).
As the legs develop, they surround and envelop the coccyx, and it winds
up inside the body.
 
Once in a great while a child will be born with a "tail." But, is it
really a tail? No, it's not even the coccyx. It doesn't have any bones
in it; it doesn't have any nerve cord either. The nervous system starts
stretched out open on the back. During development, it rises up in
ridges and rolls shut. It starts to "zipper" shut in the middle first,
then it zippers toward either end. Once in a while it doesn't go far
enough, and that produces a serious defect called spina bifida.
Sometimes it rolls a little too far. Then the baby will be born—not with
a tail, but with a fatty tumor. It's just skin and a little fatty
tissue, so the doctor can just cut it off. It's not at all like the tail
of a cat that has muscle, bones, and nerve, so cutting it off is not
complicated. (So far as I know, no one claims that proves we evolved
from an animal with a fatty tumor at the end of its spine.)
 
The details of human development are truly amazing. We really ought to
stop, take a good look at each other, and congratulate each other that
we turned out as well as we did!
 
Retracing Our "Evolutionary Development"?
 
Evolutionists used to say that human embryonic development retraced
states in our supposed evolutionary history. That idea, the now defunct
"biogenetic law," was summarized in the pithy phrase, "ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny." (Want to sound educated? Just memorize that
phrase!) The phrase means that the development of the embryo is supposed
to retrace the evolution of its group. As leading anti-creationist
Stephen Gould points out, "the theory of recapitulation… should be
defunct today," but Dr. Down named a syndrome "Mongoloid idiocy" because
he thought it represented a "throwback" to the "Mongolian stage" in
human evolution.[4] It was even once believed that the fertilized egg,
for example, would represent our one-celled ancestors, sort of the
"amoeba stage."
 
Sure enough, we start as small, round structures looking somewhat like
single cells. But notice how superficial that argument is. The
evolutionists were just looking at the outside appearance of the egg
cell. If we look just on the outside appearance, then maybe we're
related to a marble or a ball bearing—they're small, round things! An
evolutionist (or anyone else) would respond, of course, "That's crazy.
Those things are totally different on the inside from a human egg cell."
 
But that's exactly the point. If you take a look on the inside, the
"dot" we each start form is totally different from the first cell of
every other kind of life. A mouse, an elephant, and a human being are
identical in size and shape at the moment of conception. Yet in terms of
DNA and protein, right at conception each of these types of life is as
totally different chemically as each will ever be structurally. Even by
mistake, a human being can't produce a yolk or gills or a tail, because
we just don't have, and never had, those DNA instructions.
 
The human egg cell, furthermore, is not just human, but also a special
individual. Eye color, general body size, and perhaps even temperament
are already present in DNA, ready to come to visible expression.
Embryonic development is not even analogous to evolution, which is meant
to indicate a progressive increase in potential. The right Greek word
instead would be entelechy, which means an unfolding of potential
present right from the beginning. That's the kind of development that so
clearly requires creative design.
 
In reviewing the decline and fall of orthodox Darwinism, John Davy
points out that even evolutionists see the need for "theories of another
kind" (emphasis his) to explain both the origin and development of
distinctive "building plans" among organisms. "Instead of seeing animals
as collections of devices for survival, we may have to look at them as
more like works of art."[5] Works of art—that's the way Creationists
have viewed living beings all along!
 
The Abortion Connection
 
Amazingly, one can still occasionally find Haeckel's theory of
"embryonic recapitulation" being taught or implied in schools and
universities. Some "pro-choice" advocates and abortion clinics have even
used this evolutionary concept to make abortion more palatable: "We're
not cutting up a baby; it's just a fish or a jellyfish. It's not human;
it's just tissue."
 
Once again, deceptive evolutionary claims result in tragic results. In
reality, the wonderful process of embryonic development is another
marvelous reflection of the Creator's design.
"Rick C. Hodgin" <rick.c.hodgin@gmail.com>: Sep 18 06:48AM -0700

On Thursday, September 18, 2014 8:33:52 AM UTC-4, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
 
> Though, since the type of the function is affected, it might get caught
> later on in the compile. An error in the above can never be caught
> because the types are all correct.
 
It's possible.
 
Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
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