Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!ur-tut!sunybcs!boulder!hao!ames!umd5!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power operator?
Message-ID: <7007@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 9 Jan 88 09:10:32 GMT
References: <11169@brl-adm.ARPA> <10026@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 20

In article <10026@ut-sally.UUCP> nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
>      a ^^ b

I think this is about as good a notation as we can get that is
compatible with existing code.

If several of you will please send in this suggestion, along
with strong arguments, as formal public comments (when it's
time, not just yet), I'll be happy to push for getting it
adopted.  I think the only way a substantive change like this
could stand any chance of adoption at this point would be for
some other substantive change to have already been accepted,
so that this item would not be the sole cause for another
delay in publishing the final standard.

The strongest case I can think of that would justify a built-in
exponentiation operator is
	messy_expression ** 2
(Note that is an integral power that can be highly optimized
over the use of pow() to do the same job.)