Unix has generally had decent APIs, but every so often Unix people havebeen a bit too concerned with minimalism and storing data as efficientlyas possible. Several times this has invited in string-related APIs thatpractically beg for code to make mistakes, because of how they specifystring termination.

Here is an abstracted example. Consider an API where you use thefollowing structure:

struct dirent {    uint16_t  ino;    char      name[14];}

You will notice that there is nothing explicit to tell

I watched Oh! Edo Rocket several years ago (before I started writing Roving Thoughts )and enjoyed it quite a lot; ever since then I've felt that it was anunderappreciated gem, and I am glad to see people like Author discoverit .

(Yes, yes, technically Author 'discovered' it ages ago, back when itoriginally aired, and merely watched it recently. You all know what Imean. Ironically I think one of Author's old side comments about a bitin the first

It is mostly a coincidence that I wrote my previousentry on Panty & Stocking right after Author posted his roll call of the sleeping and dead .I watched the episode last night (after reading Aroduc's summary ,which pushed it up the 'I want to see this for myself' list) andimmediately wound up thinking about how to write up my reaction to it,since it's one of the few anime lately that I have had a distinctreaction to.

However, I can't deny that

It is not often that the first episode of an anime series leaves meboggled as my major reaction.

The best way I can think of to describe P&S is that it feelslike Gainax decided that they wanted to make a modern Americancartoon and then turn the age limit up (without turning up thematurity level, which appears to be set firmly at the Ren & Stimpyor Beavis & Butthead level). The result is extremely unlike almostall of the other anime I've seen, including Gainax'

(For some context, see the previous entry , inwhich this was originally a sidebar before it got too long.)

To put it one way, anime almost always gives you an external view ofcharacters and events, not an internal one (one where the character'sinternal feelings and motivations are clear to the reader). Manga andgames let you give the reader a somewhat more internal view, and writtentext lets you give them a fully internal view if you want to.

(You don't