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From: jas@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Jim Shankland)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: comma operator:  keep away?
Message-ID: <28890@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 24 Apr 89 23:32:48 GMT
References: <10007@smoke.BRL.MIL> <498@lakart.UUCP> <10057@smoke.BRL.MIL> <628@gonzo.UUCP> <28831@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1989Apr24.172219.817@utzoo.uucp>
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Reply-To: jas@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Jim Shankland)
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In article <1989Apr24.172219.817@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>On the other hand, a C programmer who [uses a comma operator to sequence
>two closely related expression evaluations, instead of two statements]
>should ... be investigating alternate career paths, because he's clearly
>an amateur in a business that needs professionals.  Anyone who says "any
>competent programmer ought to be able to understand that!" rather than
>"I should make my code as clear as possible!" is an amateur, and one with
>an ego problem at that.  Readability is very much a matter of what you're
>used to.  Like it or lump it, most C programmers are used to [the compound
>statement] and not [the comma construct].

Sigh.  Must have been lousy weather in Toronto that morning.

We're agreed that a professional programmer should code as clearly
and readably as possible, and that gratuitous cleverness is a bad
thing.  My original posting said so.  What I consider self-evidently
true, and you consider self-evidently false, is that the comma
construct is sometimes at least as clear as the equivalent compound
statement.  Short of running code comprehension experiments on
hundreds of bad C programmers, I don't see how we can resolve our
difference of opinion.  But at least I haven't questioned your
professionalism.

Now look what you've done.  Made me grumpy.  Not, on the whole, an
easy thing to do.

Jim Shankland
jas@ernie.berkeley.edu

"Blame it on the lies that killed us, blame it on the truth that ran us down"