Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!hoptoad!gnu
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: min and max, power, etc: no defined precedence
Message-ID: <3930@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 25 Jan 88 15:47:39 GMT
References: <11182@brl-adm.ARPA> <2197@haddock.ISC.COM> <2336@haddock.ISC.COM>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 20

> > >What's the appropriate precedence for these operators?

Bog forbid that any new operators get added in the last-minute rush
to a standard -- they'll probably end up like the bills that get passed
by Congress on the last 3 days of the session.  Trash, badly thought
through, passed because somebody owed somebody else a favor.

But if any operators *DO* slip through, I recommend that they have *NO
DEFINED PRECEDENCE*.  That's right, we don't need to make C's 11-level
precedence into a 12-level precedence.  Force the user to fully
parenthesize any new operator, else the compiler rejects the expression.

(I was an early convert to APL -- in which all functions have the same
precedence.  It was easy to read once you got the hang of it -- sort
of like "infix polish notation".  I still have to dig out reference
manuals to figure what C should do -- when it isn't obvious, I just
parenthesize instead.  For new operators it is by definition not obvious.)
-- 
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		"Watch me change my world..." -- Liquid Theatre