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From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: this=this
Message-ID: <1273@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 5 Sep 89 07:17:35 GMT
References: <9638@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: markku@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 24

In article <9638@alice.UUCP> ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes:
> ...
[ mainly about 'const' member functions ]
> ...
>
>Right you are.  I'll reiterate, though, that saying `this=this'
>is a dangerous anachronism and should be avoided and ultimately
>eliminated.  In fact, I'm not sure what purpose it serves if it's
>not in a constructor or destructor.

What useful purpose can 'this=this' possibly have served even
in a constructor or destructor? Help against some bug in earlier
releases of cfront? This reminds me of some "highly optimising"
but not too consistent Fortran compilers long ago:
you sometimes had to insert such foolish-looking assignment
statements into long linear code segments,
otherwise they got compiled wrong.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland