Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!hsdndev!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: The nonexistent operator (along = v. == lines)
Message-ID: <26714:Apr419:33:4991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 91 19:33:49 GMT
References: <156@revcan.UUCP> <1991Apr3.184316.11559@dg-rtp.dg.com> <20206@lanl.gov>
Organization: IR
Lines: 18

In article <20206@lanl.gov> jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
> This is one of the problems with confounding two distinct concepts
> into one language feature - people soon begin to believe the two
> concepts are inseparable.  In this case, short-circuiting and 
> logical con/disjunction are distinct concepts that just happen
> to be combined into single operators.

What Jim fails to point out is that short-circuiting is almost entirely
useless with bitwise operators---it could only make a difference if the
first argument had all bits zero, and you can use (a)?(b):0 for that.

Conversely, since you can always implement a non-short-circuit logical
operator as (e.g.) !!(a) & !!(b), there's no reason for the language to
provide any logical operators other than the short-circuit ones.

This is common sense, not ``confounding.''

---Dan