Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: When it is amoral...
Message-ID: <10219@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 7 May 89 21:15:04 GMT
References: <2765@buengc.BU.EDU> <563@lzaz.ATT.COM> <4093@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <4093@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <563@lzaz.ATT.COM>, hutch@lzaz.ATT.COM (R.HUTCHISON) writes:
>> 	midpoint_pointer = (start_pointer + end_pointer) / 2;
>You're right. It's a valid operation.
>(what's the average of the 7 clubs and the 9 clubs?)

What's the average of the 7 of clubs and the 10 of clubs?
What if sizeof(club) > 1?  Shouldn't we end up pointing into
the middle of a club?

How is any sane language definition supposed to factor in
such application-specific notions of what is "appropriate"
behavior?

C provides a sufficiently simple way to specify exactly what
is intended in such situations.