Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!umd5!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power macro
Message-ID: <10375@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jan 88 09:06:35 GMT
References: <302@Aragorn.dde.uucp> <7139@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3461@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <744@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 36

In article <744@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> edw@IUS1.CS.CMU.EDU (Eddie Wyatt) writes:
>Why not? why not have an extendable language, where the user is free to 
>define his own infix operators?  Is it that outragous?  

Not at all.  Various people have done it, although it requires a
weird parser.  Personally, I like the idea of having *no* operators
(a la Lisp, e.g.), perhaps with a `tricksy preprocessor' that can
turn `operators' into functional notation.  The latter might be
done with augmented regular expressions (you need something powerful
enough to handle nested parentheses, for instance).

>THIS IS JUST HYPOTHETICAL - I"M NOT SERIOUSLY APPROSING THIS!

Good.  Neither am I ... at least for C.

>I know that the [#define sqr(x) ((x)*(x))] macro won't work in all
>situations, I don't think you can write one that will work in all
>situations.  So o.k. I'm game, what's "the right" way to write the
>macro.  :-/  

How about something like this?

	overload sqr;
	inline int sqr(int x) { return (x * x); }
	inline float sqr(float x) { return (x * x); }
	inline double sqr(double x) { return (x * x); }
	inline complex sqr(complex x) { return (x * x); }
	inline dcomplex sqr(dcomplex x) { return (x * x); }
	inline quaternion sqr(quaternion x) { return (x * x); }
	/* etc */

But please, not in a standard that ought to be making C-as-it-was
a standard, not C-as-we-think-it-should-be a standard.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris