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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mouton!ryan
From: ryan@mouton.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: C subscripts
Message-ID: <195@mouton.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Oct-84 09:37:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: mouton.195
Posted: Fri Oct 26 09:37:29 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Oct-84 03:38:04 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 44

I hope I am not bringing up and old issue
but this discussion about nested comments brings
a similiar niggle to mind; one that I am certain
should raise an equally fruitful controversy.

I am talking about C's arcane subscripting syntax.

Who else out there thinks that
	some_array_name[more][long][names]
is actually a good way to do things?

Just as we need nested comments, because after all other "great languages"
do, I propose that C support "normal" subscripting.

Mathematicians have been around longer than C; Fortran too;
so, in the name of compatability, which is what the ANSI standard
is all about anyway, the compiler SHOULD accept 
	some_array_name[more,long,names]

Of course the older, hopefully obsolescent, method will be supported,
but it should be discouraged.

I would also propose one small, new, preprocessor built-in,
	SUBTYPE  which would be defined OLD or NEW
as in 
	#if SUBTYPE == OLD
		fprintf(stder, "buy a new compiler");
so programmers know what's going on.
Not defining SUBTYPE would be considered in an optional subsection
to the standard.  These details I leave to those who know best.

Now, BEFROE the flames start I KNOW the comma operator exists.
This is not overloading because subscripts are expressions, not statements.
So don't start quoting K&R pg 192 to me.

If you're still confused think about it this way:
	a[x,y,z] saves 20% more disk space than a[x][y][z]
and is much easier to type too!

respectfully,
Tom Ryan

p.s.  Does anyone know of a good preprocessor macro to convert
	[a,b,c,...n] into [a][b][c][...][n] for n>1 ?