Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!lambda!jlg
From: jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <14248@lambda.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 90 23:34:50 GMT
References: <18172@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Lines: 27

From article <18172@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>, by mike@cs.arizona.edu (Mike Coffin):
> [...]
> A correction for those readers not familiar with C: the above is not
> true.  Arrays and pointers are different beasts.  The confusion arises
> because array names are *converted* to pointers when passed as
> parameters and because the [] operator can be used on both.  To make
> an analogy, in both Fortran and C, integers are sometimes converted
> automatically to reals (floats in C) and many of the same operators apply
> to integers and reals but that doesn't mean that Fortran and C don't
> really _have_ an integer data type.

A correction for those readers not familiar with C: the above is not
true.  Arrays are pretty useless unless you can pass them around as
procedure arguments.  C converts all arrays to pointers when passing
them to procedures.  AND: YOU _CAN'T_ CONVERT THEM BACK ONCE YOU'RE
THERE!!!!!  They are not treated as arrays anywhere except the scope
in which they were declared - and CAN'T be treated as arrays anywhere
except their home scope.

To make an analogy, it's as if, once an integer was converted to real,
it could _never_ be converted back!  And normal usage of integers
_forces_ you to convert them to real on frequent occasions.  So that,
in effect, you really _DON'T_ have integers.  Fortunately, even C
doesn't really do this to integers.  But is DOES do the corresponding
thing to arrays.

J. Giles