Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!druid!darcy
From: darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Assignment in test: OK?
Message-ID: <1990Sep14.135655.18015@druid.uucp>
Date: 14 Sep 90 13:56:55 GMT
References: <1990Sep7.042759.3804@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <3836@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <57945@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: D'Arcy Cain Consulting, West Hill, Ontario
Lines: 27

In article <57945@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> bomgard@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Tim Bomgardner) writes:
>In article <3836@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> rns@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert) writes:
>}In <1990Sep7.042759.3804@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> gordon@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu (John Gordon) writes:
>}>	One way to avoid the =/== pitfall is to write your code like this:
>}>	if(7 == x) rather than if(x == 7).
>}    If you remember to put the constant on the left, won't you also remember
>}to use `==' rather than `='?
>conditionals all look like Fortran: 'if (x EQ 7 OR y LT 3)'.  Guess you can
>tell where *I* grew up.  Haven't had a problem in years, except once from
>someone who was reusing some of my code.

Which is the problem with that sort of code.  You can't give C code disguised
as FORTRAN to a C programmer and expect them to be comfortable with it.  I
like to do the following;

    if ((x = 7) != 0)

It makes the intention perfectly obvious to any other C programmer and most
compilers will optimize it anyway.  The Borland compiler has settings that
flag the 'if (x = 7)' construct as a warning and I use this on the DOS side.
It has caught a few typos for me.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid)     |
D'Arcy Cain Consulting             |   MS-DOS:  The Andrew Dice Clay
West Hill, Ontario, Canada         |   of operating systems.
+ 416 281 6094                     |