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From: guido@boring.uucp (Guido van Rossum)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: To dereference or not dereference
Message-ID: <6840@boring.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 21:13:28 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6840
Posted: Sun Mar 23 21:13:28 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 05:25:34 EST
References: <196@aplvax.UUCP> <2600040@ccvaxa> <146@sdchema.sdchem.UUCP> <651@bentley.UUCP>
Reply-To: guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum)
Organization: "Stamp Out BASIC" Committee, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 17
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax

If I were to redesign C, function names would just be constant pointers
to pieces of code, just like array names would be constant pointers
(though alas they aren't because of sizeof -- sizeof for functions is
undefined anyway).  The syntax for a function call would require an
expression of type function pointer to the left of the parenthesis.
Function pointers couldn't be dereferenced.  (I might leave unary * and
& applied to functions in the language to achieve compatibility with
existing programs.)

It has been said that now one can't see whether f() calls a function
named f or a function whose address resides in function pointer variable
f -- it this really important?  You don't know for array names or macros
either (does a+1 reference variable a or macro a?  If the answer is that
macros should be upper case, sulerly you can invent a convention whereby
to recognize function pointers).

	Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam (guido@mcvax.UUCP)