Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: (So-Called) ANSI C
Summary: Actually about Turbo C warnings
Message-ID: <1821@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jan 88 04:53:36 GMT
References: <4668@pyr.gatech.EDU> <495@xyzzy.UUCP> <9930@mimsy.UUCP> <6996@brl-smoke.ARPA> <10027@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 19

In article <10027@ut-sally.UUCP> nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
[about constructs such as "if (a = getinput())"]
>It isn't a typo.  I use it all the time to assign a value to a variable,
>then test the result.  I find it seriously irritating that Turbo C
>crabs about the construction. 

I can't verify this right now (it takes forever to reboot out VAX to run
MSDOS :-), but I seem to recall that while Turbo C will complain about

     if (a = getinput())

(and I think it ought to), it will not complain about the equivalent

     if ((a = getinput()) != 0)

since you are making your intention clear, both to the human reader and
to the compiler.  I think Datalight C makes the same distinction.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi