🚀 go-pugleaf

The Amorphous Mass (robinson@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu) wrote:
: On 16 Apr 1996, HASDI RODZMANN HASHIM wrote:

:   C-style.  Especially since C types can contain multiple tokens;

:   const char *(p) is less clear IMO than (const char *)p.

Hmm.... another thing about pascal is that dereferencer is postfix 
instead of prefix. That way, I can cast a void * (Pascal - pointer) into 
something else...

C-style:
	typedef myrecord_s {...} myrecord,*myrec;

	my_int = ((myrecord*)myvar)->intA; /* yeach! */
or...
	my_int = (*(myrecord*)myvar).intA; /* see above */	

Pascal-syle:
	myrecp : ^myrecord;
	myrecord : record ... end;

	myInt := myrecp(myvar)^.intA; { looks clean }
	myInt := ^myrecord(myvar)^.intA; { compile error? }

Remix:
	my_int = myrecp(myvar)*.intA;
or...
	my_int = myrecord*(myvar)*.intA; /* ouch! */

Some people mentioned about type-casting != type-conversion and C++ use
makes distinction between them using cast-notation (c-style) and
function-notation (pascal-style). I think I am getting the hang of the
differences; I had to talk to my professor and read C++ draft to figure
out what it going on. 

The way I understand it, type-conversion is to transform the bits of one
variable so that it is representable as the type to be converted into. eg. 
(int)my_float. type-casting doesn't transform the bits at all, but force
the compiler to treat that variable as the specified type... which is
highly unportable. Why would anyone want to typecast then? Can somebody
clarify this for me? 

As a side note, using typedef so that you can use "myrecord" instead of
"struct myrecord_s" has been a real major bug to me. Unfortunately, this
is necessary to avoid shift/reduce conflicts. Makes me wonder how C++
parser works. (If I stick to Pascal-style, this would also mean I have to
redesign the declaration section, C-style or Pascal? But that's another
story.)

Thanks guys!

Hasdi