Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!hplabs!otter!kers
From: kers@otter.HP.COM (Christopher Dollin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power operator?
Message-ID: <1670005@otter.HP.COM>
Date: 8 Jan 88 11:10:20 GMT
References: <47000029@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories,Bristol,UK.
Lines: 23


GRR!
Sorry for the previous two responses; I messed up using vi (spit) then pressed
"w" instead of "W" in notes ....

Chris Torke quotes Herman Rubin as saying ...

[lots of preamble]
>Similar thinking would require one to write x = sub(y, z) instead of
>x = y - z.  This is a major design flaw in all HLLs which I know.
[lots of postamble]

Pop11 allows any word to be declared as an operator with a particular
precedence. Such a word must be a variable (or constant) having a procedure
as its value; the effect of writing the wortd as an operartor is just to 
call its procedure value. All the built-in operators work this way (of course
the compiler can optimise some of them to in-line code).

A word can be a C-like name or one composed out of signs. So the user can
declare operators like "--" or "<=>", or "cat", "pow", "without", etc.

Regards,
Kers                                    | Why Lisp if you can talk Poperly?