Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: why bother with operator precedence
Message-ID: <15289@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 27 Mar 90 08:21:24 GMT
References: <2205@osc.COM> <340018@hplvli.HP.COM> <19356@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> <1379@ux.acs.umn.edu> <2031@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Lines: 25

In article <2031@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>It is much worse.  The precedence rules in algebra are well known, but the
>arbitrary ones in C are not, and are not intuitive.  What is the precedence
>for 
>
>		a << b + c 

I think the point was that you should say what you mean, i.e.

		(a << b) + c
or
		a << (b + c)

as appropriate, in code that you write.  I try to do this myself in
cases where there might be any doubt among those who don't have
prefrontal YACC implants :-).

However it's probably a good idea to run C students through the list,
because they will someday have to READ code as well as write it.

It would also be nice to write and pass around a tiny public domain
utility that takes any C expression and parenthesizes it to the max.
-- 
"How can a man of integrity get along    ///  Tom Neff
in Washington?" -- Richard Feynman      ///   tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET