Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!cpsc6a!rtech!llama!wong
From: wong@llama.rtech.UUCP (J. Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power operator?
Message-ID: <1559@rtech.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 88 02:38:27 GMT
References: <11169@brl-adm.ARPA>
Sender: news@rtech.UUCP
Reply-To: wong@llama.UUCP (J. Wong)
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
Lines: 21

In article <11169@brl-adm.ARPA> V4039%TEMPLEVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Stan Horwitz) writes:
>
>The question still stands.  Why does C have no symbol to serve as a power
>operator.  There are so many symbols to use, and it would be easy to implement.

One of the original motivations of the people who designed C was
that no operation should result in a function call being generated
in order to implement the language.  Although, structure assignment
and return might seem to violate this, it's true on some machines
that they can be implemented through machine instructions.  So, in
general I think that the orginal motivation is still valid, and no
operation (such as a power operator) should be introduced if the
only way it can be implemented is through a function call.

				J. Wong		ucbvax!mtxinu!rtech!wong

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