Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsl!mpl
From: mpl@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (michael.p.lindner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: A nice macro
Summary: foo considered dangerous
Message-ID: <887@cbnewsl.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 Jun 89 18:15:36 GMT
References: <2784@solo8.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 26

In article <2784@solo8.cs.vu.nl>, maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
> An often-heard complaint by Pascal dweebs on C is the absence of the
> equivalence of
	.
	.
	.
> 	bar	_foo[HIGH - LOW + 1];
> 
> 	#define		foo		(_foo - LOW)
	.
	.
	.
> There's only one (small) objection: name space pollution - an invisible
> extra identifier `_foo' is needed.

I can think of another objection.  The C convention that the address of the
first element of an array == its name.  Not to mention that this "foo" can
no longer be passed to sizeof().  And I'm sure some cleverer people will
notice that "foo" may not be calculable in some implementations of C, since
it involves an address BEFORE the actual start of an array.

Mike Lindner
attunix!mpl
AT&T Bell Laboratories
190 River Rd.
Summit, NJ 07901