Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!gdr!exspes
From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: A question of style
Message-ID: <1989Dec18.113539.10935@gdt.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Dec 89 11:35:39 GMT
References: <547@mars.Morgan.COM> <1989Nov30.001947.14883@aqdata.uucp> <427@jhereg.Minnetech.MN.ORG> <31884@news.Think.COM> <490@nixba.UUCP>
Reply-To: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath
Lines: 16

In article <490@nixba.UUCP> mike@nixba.UUCP (Mike Lyons) writes:
>I once taught a C seminar for Philips, and in their house "style manual" for
>C the use of the comma operator was absolutely forbidden.

I have a pathlogical dislike for the comma operator, because its most
common use seems to be to allow overloading of too many unrelated concepts
into one source line, in a sort of 'Gosh, amn't I clever' coding style.
Banning it altogether is probably excessive, because I think there are
occasions when it helps make things clearer or more efficient.  I do wish,
though, that someone could put a heuristic into the compiler so that it
would be rejected if it is being used because it is 'flash' rather than
because it wins something in the context. :-)

-- 
Paul Smee, Univ of Bristol Comp Centre, Bristol BS8 1TW, Tel +44 272 303132
 Smee@bristol.ac.uk  :-)  (..!uunet!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes if you MUST)