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From: quiroz@cs.rochester.edu (Cesar Quiroz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: swaps with arrays
Message-ID: <1955@sol.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 14:55:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sol.1955
Posted: Tue Sep  8 14:55:00 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Sep-87 06:16:45 EDT
References: <2376@zeus.TEK.COM> <110@umigw.MIAMI.EDU>
Reply-To: quiroz@ROCHESTER.UUCP (Cesar Quiroz)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 31

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From article <110@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> (steve@umigw.UUCP (steve emmerson)):
:In article <1354@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter
:Bright) wrote:
 -- classic stuff about generic swaps edited out --
:
:Causing Dan Tilque to wonder [bear with me ;-)] (in article
:<2376@zeus.TEK.COM> dant@tekla.UUCP):
:+--------
:|Can someone tell me why every one expects (or requires) a swap macro to 
:|work with arrays?  The reason that they don't is that an array name is
:|a constant and not an object.  ...
:+--------
:
:Well, I can't speak for everyone ;-), but if I was given a generic swap
:routine that only worked on a subset of all possible data types ...
:well, I might consider it very useful, but I wouldn't consider it
:generic.  

What does it have to do with genericity (generic-hood?)?  Dan
Tilque's comment can be seen better in the light of another example:
what would you like
                            swap(1, 2);
to mean?  It seems to me that he has a clear point: C arrays are
constants, `swap' should act on (the values of) variables.

-- 
Cesar Augusto  Quiroz Gonzalez
Department of Computer Science     {allegra|seismo}!rochester!quiroz
University of Rochester            or
Rochester,  NY 14627               quiroz@cs.rochester.edu