🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4hv081$jdt@solutions.solon.com>,
Marc Espie <espie@clipper.ens.fr> wrote:

>>It's obvious that:
>>	A [i] == 'l'
>>But what is:
>>	i [A] == ???
>
>>Any competent C programmer should know.
>
>Any *competent* C programmer should know ??? Come on, have you *ever*
>seen this weird construct used outside of the IOCCC ?

I've used it once.  In the process I discovered that IBM's xlc compiler
doesn't like reverse array notation -- it generates bad code.

I think a C programmer should know that array indexing is commutative,
but I wouldn't ask about it in an interview.  Unless I was interviewing
somebody just out of school for a first real programming job I wouldn't
ask detailed C syntax/semantic questions at all.  There are too many
details of C.  It would take a long time to ask about them all, and it
is reasonable not to know some of them.

Q: Which has higher precedence, + or |?
A: I don't remember, so I use parentheses.

I really didn't remember and I've been using C for more than 10 years.
When I need to know I take 30 seconds to write a C program to see what the
compiler does, or read the standard, or look at gcc's parser.  (Sun's C
compiler says + is higher than |.)  Maybe that would be a good interview
question: ask what the precedence is and if the answer is "I don't know"
follow up by asking: "show me how you would find out".

-- 
    John Carr (jfc@mit.edu)