Path: utzoo!telly!ddsw1!mcdchg!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!rice!titan.rice.edu!bbc
From: bbc@titan.rice.edu
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: left-hand side cast
Message-ID: <2100@kalliope.rice.edu>
Date: 3 Nov 88 09:03:48 GMT
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Reply-To: bbc@titan.rice.edu ()
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Lines: 17


I just read about left-hand side casts in the Internals of GNU CC, and was
wondering how everyone else feels about them.  They seem odd to me, as if
most of their uniqueness from traditional casts won't often be used.
Rather, I feel that they would typically be used for clarity, as a
substitute for wrapping the whole right-hand side in parentheses and a cast.

As an example, with "char *a" as in the section 5.4:
    a = (char *)( some complicated expression containing many parens)
becomes
    (char *)a = some complicated expression containing many parens

I haven't used left-hand side casts, or gcc, and so this is all intuition.
Any comments from experienced users?  Apologies if this has already been
hashed.

	Ben Chase	bbc@rice.edu		Computer Science Dept.