Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!zeus!tekla!dant
From: dant@tekla.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque;1893;92-789;LP=A;60aC)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power operator?
Message-ID: <2937@zeus.TEK.COM>
Date: 9 Jan 88 12:28:35 GMT
References: <11183@brl-adm.ARPA>
Sender: news@zeus.TEK.COM
Reply-To: dant@tekla.UUCP (Dan Tilque)
Organization: Church of Christ, Secular Humanist
Lines: 22

Stan Horwitz writes:
>
>  One more comment about the power operator.  So far most of the arguments
>against it's use are reasonable, but not acceptable.  If C can have an
>operator for such as % for modulo divide, why not one for exponentiation?
>Surely the same arguments against such a request can also be made against
>the inclusion of %.  Anyway, sorry to drag down the group with this topic.


The historical reason for having modulo but not power is that C was
originally a systems language.  The modulo operator is much more useful
that exponentiation for that purpose.  Now that C is used for many
different applications, perhaps it should be added.  However, if it is
added I think it should be restricted to having the exponent be an
integer.  If float exponents are desired, the user should have to invoke a
library routine.

---
Dan Tilque

Now, if I could talk them into putting in a division operator which also
returns the remainder (combined / and %)...