As Brian of Nazareth so eloquently put it, "err... A lot!"
As it happens, the message just before yours in my mailbox was
not only a basic question, but one already answered in the FAQ
list I maintain! I replied,
I presume you're writing because you've seen the C FAQ
list and other C programming resources I maintain.
If so, see question 19.1.
Most people I know just ignore these questions; there's no
percentage in getting annoyed by them. I'm a sucker, so I
usually send brief answers (though usually after delays measured
in months; my mail's always badly backed up). I have this
canned postscript I append:
I'm starting to get an uncomfortable number of
unsolicited questions, probably as a result of the
comp.lang.c FAQ list, C programming notes, and other
resources which I've made available on the net.
In the future, please try to respond to the authors of
such material with specific comments or suggestions or
requests for clarification, and post your open-ended
questions to public discussion forums, such as Usenet
newsgroups, instead. Thanks.
Sometimes my equanimity is broken and I get annoyed in spite of
myself. Here's a reply I found myself composing in response to a
peevish note I once received inquiring about why I still hadn't
replied to an unsolicited question I'd received only a day or two
before:
> Are you not there? Or is it that you don't want to
> answer? I would at least have said hello. Am I too
> far beneath the expertiese for anyone to care, or is
> there some elite group that I should join? I would
> have thoutht it a very simple question. Perhaps not.
Please realize that:
1. I'm reasonably busy;
2. Despite occasional appearances to the contrary,
I can be reasonably irresponsible, especially at
things like responding to e-mail in a timely fashion;
3. Even people who I owe e-mail responses to often have
to wait for months;
4. Your second message arrived barely more than a
day later than the first;
5. I'm replying within three weeks, which is very
good for me; and
6. It's occasionally quite annoying to realize that my
reward for posting the information I do to the net
and web is that I get all these unsolicited questions
which I'm expected to answer.
Number 6 is the one that really galls me ... but wait, I'm about
to get annoyed again, and no need for that. Deep breath.
"There are a lot of idiots out there." Right. I guess we have
to leave it at that; it's a fact we can't change.
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com