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From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Binary Trees in C
Keywords: Binary Tree
Message-ID: <16250@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 22 Mar 90 00:31:39 GMT
References: <21744@netnews.upenn.edu> <23127@mimsy.umd.edu> <1990Mar16.112415.803@hellgate.utah.edu>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 27

In article <1990Mar16.112415.803@hellgate.utah.edu> kbreinho%ug.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Keith Breinholt) writes:
>In article <23127@mimsy.umd.edu> chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
>>As for your binary tree implementation: I would likely use pointers to
>>pointers, but then I write declarations like
>>	int (*(*bloog[10])(char *, void (*)(int, int (*)(void))))[4];
>>without flinching. :-)
>
>... Do you really think someone would want to [maintain] crap like that?

Actually, I have to agree.  Since a pointer-to-entire-array is so much weaker
than a pointer-to-element, I would assume that the existence of even a single
function returning such a type (not to mention an array of pointers to such
functions) is evidence that, in this project, "int[4]" is an important
construct and should probably have had its own typedef.

Of course, that has to have been an exaggerated example--did you miss the
smiley?  A more serious example would be
	extern void (*signal(int, void (*)(int)))(int);
, which is probably the most complex declaration you'd encounter in practice.
Though I personally don't bother with "typedef void (*sighandler_t)(int)", I
don't look down on those who do.

But for the original problem, a pointer-to-pointer seems to be the natural
solution, and anybody who can't understand such a construct needs to practice
a bit more before trying to write production-quality code.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint