Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ambiguous why?
Message-ID: <10263@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 5 Apr 88 20:40:31 GMT
References: <1303@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 29

In article <1303@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> edw@IUS1.CS.CMU.EDU (Eddie Wyatt) writes:
| When I was playing around with that last example I posted, I got an
| error message that said something to the extent:
| 
| 	warning ambiguous assigment: assignment op taken
| 	syntax error at or near symbol *=
| 
| A simplified version of the statement is:
| 
| 	int *a, *b;
| 
| 	*a+=*b;

Older versions of C allowed =+ =* etc as assignment forms. Later
versions switched to *= and += so that the unary minus would not be
ambiguous. Your compiler is seeing the =* and complaining.

Ambiguous to the eye but not the compiler:
	d = a+++b;

The compiler should go left to right and take the longest valid sequence
of characters, so the result is:
	d = a++ + b;

Perhaps someone will find the reference in ANSI for this and post it.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me