Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!thor!mike
From: mike@thor.stolaf.edu (Mike Haertel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Compiler Error?
Summary: not an error
Keywords: "?:" precedence cc pcc assignment 43BSD SunOS
Message-ID: <1196@thor.stolaf.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 89 02:19:49 GMT
References: <683@sbsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: mike@stolaf.edu
Organization: St. Olaf College; Northfield, MN
Lines: 24

In article <683@sbsvax.UUCP> greim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) writes:
>Consider the following program:
...
>		(j = 2) ? k = 3 : 4;
...
>According to the C books I could get my hands on,
>"?:" has higher precedence than the assignment operators, like
>"=" for instance. (In X3J11 too)
>
>Thus the compiler should find an error in the statement, something
>like "misplaced assignment".

No.  That this works is not an error.  Precedence rules are used
to resolve ambiguity about which of two neighboring operators
an expression belongs to.  In this case, the assignment statement
is in the middle of an operator, so to speak, so there is no
ambiguity.

>PS.: I found such a statement in GNU grep, when I was porting it to SINIX.

Don't send a bug report about GNU grep because I won't change it just for
the benefit of some brain damaged compiler without a proper parser.

	Mike Haertel