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From: jharkins@sagpd1.UUCP (Jim Harkins)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C style peeve and knowing the rules
Message-ID: <689@sagpd1.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 90 00:31:04 GMT
References: <2205@osc.COM> <340018@hplvli.HP.COM> <19356@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: jharkins@sagpd1.UUCP (Jim Harkins)
Organization: Scientific Atlanta, Government Products Div, San Diego, CA
Lines: 22

In article <19356@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> robert@cs.arizona.edu (Robert J. Drabek) writes:
>I require my students to use the absolute minimum number of parenthesis
>until they have ALL the rules down pat.  After leaving my courses (or in
>the privacy of their own PC) they'll do whatever feels good, but I will
>have done my job as well as I can by getting them to understand these
>details.

My God I hope I never ever run into one of your students.  Pray tell, what
does

	x = *a->b++ + ++z / 3 << 9^6 + 3 >> 2 ^ 5 <= 98 *~ c % d--;

evaluate to?  And is it really what the programmer intended?  Are you sure?
Why penalize a student for trying to make his code both more readable and
maintainable?  And are you sure they don't get the code working using
parens, then re-edit it to remove the 'unneeded' parens?  I sure would!

-- 
jim		jharkins@sagpd1

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