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From: stuart@bms-at.UUCP (Stuart D. Gathman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Unary plus
Message-ID: <374@bms-at.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Apr-87 23:27:59 EST
Article-I.D.: bms-at.374
Posted: Wed Apr 15 23:27:59 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 05:13:37 EST
References: <6772@brl-adm.ARPA> <803@viper.UUCP>
Organization: Business Management Systems, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 46
Summary: A lot of people shouldn't be programming in 'C'


If y'all succeed in turning C into Fortran, I'll just have to get GNU C
before it gets corrupted.

If the possibility that the compiler might reorder your expressions bothers
you, *don't program in 'C'*.  Try Fortran, Algol, SPL, whatever.

'C' was not designed for applications programmers.  It can be best described
as a portable, structured assembler.  The proposal to make parens work like
Fortran defeats the purpose of 'C'.  If 'C' is destroyed in this manner,
I might revert to Pascal.

The current rage of writing every piece of code in the world in 'C' may
be doing the language a disservice.  I am glad there are some LISP programmers
out there who realize the value of using the right tool for the job.

If you like structures, pointers, and user defineable types, but don't like
the close attention to portability required, try Pascal.  It has a lot
of improvements over 'C' along those lines

	a) no need to worry about how many bits integral types might have.
	Just define the range!  Pascal will automatically generate bitfields,
	bytes, words, regardless of architecture.  You can even select between
	optimizing space (PACKED) or speed (not PACKED).

	b) enumeration constants are actually type checked.

	c) You don't have to remember the '&' before function arguments 
	passed as pointers.  Just declare them as VAR and compiler takes
	care of the rest.

	d) Parens define order of evaluation as well as syntax.

This is just a partial list.  There is a price to pay, but there are just
different tradeoffs than with 'C'.  There are some dumb things about 'C'
(like making vars public instead of private by default), but the definition
of parens is not one of them.  The ambiguous definition of 'int' and certain
operators is also based on careful consideration.

If you want a variable with a particular number of bits, DON'T USE 'int'.  That
is not the purpose of 'int'.

If you want parens to determine order of evaluation, DON'T USE 'C'.  That is
not the purpose of 'C'.
-- 
Stuart D. Gathman	<..!seismo!dgis!bms-at!stuart>