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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: prototyping (oh no! not again??)
Message-ID: <4402@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 29 Nov 90 06:25:27 GMT
References: <DAVIS.90Nov26144044@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu> <DAVIS.90Nov28140038@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 28

In article <DAVIS.90Nov28140038@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu>, davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu ("John E. Davis") writes:
> Also, what C lacks is something as the fortran ** operator. Why can't this be
> implemented as a binary operator say as x^y.

For the same reason that SIN isn't a unary operator in Fortran, even
though mathematicians use "sin x" in preference to "sin(x)".  Let's
face it, Fortran hasn't a MOD operator!  (All together now, let's flame
Fortran for not having something as basic as "%".)  The answer is:
either you go the APL route of making _everything_ an operator, or you
draw a line somewhere and say "this has the syntax of an operator, that
has the syntax of a function call".  That choice has *NO* consequences
for how the implementation works.  In this particular case, "^" already
*is* an operator in C, meaning bit-wise exclusive or.

> I am not sure what the pow function does.
Why not check a manual and find out before complaining that C hasn't got 
an equivalent of **?  In ANSI C, if you have done
	#include <math.h>
there is no significant non-syntactic difference between pow() and
<REAL or DOUBLE> ** <INTEGER or REAL or DOUBLE>.
An ANSI C compiler is fully entitled to compile
	x = pow(y, 2);		/* I _did_ say ANSI!  Pre-ANSI needs 2.0 */
as 	x = y*y;

Is this in the FAQ?

-- 
I am not now and never have been a member of Mensa.		-- Ariadne.