Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ISC.COM (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power Proposal for ANSI C
Message-ID: <2370@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 88 01:39:57 GMT
References: <302@Aragorn.dde.uucp> <7139@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3461@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 14

In article <3461@ihlpf.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpf.UUCP (00704A-Liber,N.) writes:
>In article <7139@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>>... the squaring operator (expr ** 2) is quite heavily used.
>
>Yes, but if you know that you are going to be squaring you can replace it
>with (expr * expr) (possibly needing temp variables depending on the side
>effects concerning expr)

That's the point -- having to use the temp variables is a pain.  If the only
expressions I ever wanted to square were simple variables, I wouldn't mind
using the multiply.  It's because of the things with side effects (or even
side-effect-free expressions that are complicated) that we want a power op.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint