Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!crowl
From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Operator overloading - some historical context
Message-ID: <6380@sol.ARPA>
Date: 30 Jan 88 04:50:00 GMT
References: <240@vsi1.UUCP> <11430005@hpldola.HP.COM> <138@ritcv.UUCP>
Reply-To: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 14

In article <138@ritcv.UUCP> mjl@ritcv.UUCP (Michael Lutz) writes:
>... However overloading, whatever its notational convenience, and however
>much it may seem "obvious" in a local context, threatens to wreak the
>same havoc as did syntax macros way back when.

Each programmer works in a local context, so unless we form an international
registry of function names, we must accept operation overloading.  Whether
this overloading is done with "+" or "add" is somewhat moot.  In the absence
of formal definitions, "intuition" is all we have for guiding function names
and operator symbols.
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-9499	University of Rochester
		      crowl@cs.rochester.edu	Computer Science Department
...!{allegra,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627