Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!kodak!ektools!randolph
From: randolph@ektools.UUCP (Gary L. Randolph)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Pointer incrementation and assignme
Message-ID: <1929@ektools.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jun 89 12:36:45 GMT
References: <2015@csuna.csun.edu> <236100012@mirror>
Sender: randolph@ektools (Gary L. Randolph)
Reply-To: randolph@ektools.UUCP (Gary L. Randolph)
Organization: Eastman Kodak, Dept. 47, Rochester NY
Lines: 28

In article <236100012@mirror> root@mirror.TMC.COM writes:
-The compiler knows the size of the data that you are working with.
-a+=1 and a = a+1 will still increment the pointer by 2.
-The same way the compiler knows how to increment ints, floats, longs,
-and doubles, it knows how to correctly increment any pointer, no matter
-what the syntax that you use.  
-In reality
What is 'reality'
-the command a++ is just shorthand for a+=1 and a = a+1.  It was origionally
Things are never this simple at deeper levels.
-made for lines like:
-
-	whatchamacallit = whatchamacallit + 1;
-
-Carnigan and Ritchie were programmers who didn't like to type.
 ^^^^^^^^?

I SERIOUSLY doubt that two brilliant minds (*Kerninghan* and Ritchie)
included such a feature because they don't like to TYPE.  Perhaps you
are confusing this with the fact that 'type' was something the original
C tended to ignore.  There have been many pleas lately to keep the S/N
ratio down.  Let's not waste $$$$. (My past does not make me a saint :->)
I recall, from my PDP 11 assembler days, two addressing modes;
autoincrement and autodecrement.  I believe that something of this nature
had *much* more to do with the post and preincrement/decrement operators
than did K&R's typing skills.

                           Gary