Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!ima!mirror!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Order of evaluation, machine floating point
Message-ID: <739@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 00:41:28 EST
Article-I.D.: xanth.739
Posted: Wed Mar 25 00:41:28 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Mar-87 06:20:09 EST
References: <4775@brl-adm.ARPA> <7779@utzoo.UUCP> <521@cpocd2.UUCP> <2910@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 23

In article <2910@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes:
>K&R's forcing things to double precision, as well as not having a
>reasonable way (I know, use temporary variables; that's not
>reasonable!) to force order of evaluation made it almost completely
>unsuitable for doing number crunching. ANSI has fixed both of those
>(or made it possible for compiler writers to fix them).

Mike,
	Not a flame at you, but C was an ugly language to begin with,
	because so much of it doesn't parse the way it reads, due to
	_bizarre_ precedence results.  Adding the unary plus, which,
	to anyone taught mathematics, is a no-op, and making that the
	way to control the order of evaluation, just makes an ugly
	language uglier.  Code that needs to be _that_ fast should
	be done in assembly.  ANSI should have mandated respecting
	parentheses for evaluation order, so that code executes the
	way it reads.  This would break _no_ code, and would let
	programmers' intuition be of some use in writing code in C.
	I just can't be very sympathetic, in a time of ever increasing
	computer speeds and memory, to optimizing the code at the
	expense of the coder.  The latter is the big expense item
	these days, and has been for over ten years now.
Kent.