Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!homxb!whuts!mtune!rutgers!sri-spam!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: min and max, power, etc: no defined precedence
Summary: done before
Message-ID: <582@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 88 03:39:14 GMT
References: <11182@brl-adm.ARPA> <2197@haddock.ISC.COM> <2336@haddock.ISC.COM> <1411@mips.mips.COM>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 23

In article <1411@mips.mips.COM>, hansen@mips.COM (Craig Hansen) writes:
> In article <3930@hoptoad.uucp>, gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
> > > > >What's the appropriate precedence for these operators?
> > 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 have designed a language/compiler that has this precise feature for
> ALL operators, and would just like to add that it's WONDERFUL.  It not

It's been half-done:  Wirth tried to "simplify" Pascal by flattening
the operator precedence.  Dunno about you, but the result strikes me
as a major pain.
It's been done before:  APL has been doing this for years.
Remember APL: the language people keep screaming "unreadable" at?
It's been done before:  anyone remember PL/11?  Anyone *like* PL/11?
It's been done even better:  Lisp has no operators...

The problem in C is not so much the number of precedence levels,
as that many operators cannot be distinguished by operand type.
For example, letting x be any scalar variable, and y be any
non-register variable, x&&&y is legal...