🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <912408515.26096.1.nnrp-07.9e9809e7@news.demon.co.uk>
           chris@NOSPAM.skymap.com "Chris Marriott" writes:

>
>Tony Street wrote in message <36618e67.0@isc-newsserver.isc.rit.edu>...
>>Chris Marriott wrote in message
>>>If you don't use parentheses to force the order of evaluation, does the C
>>>language guarentee left-to-right evaluation? I don't have a copy of the
>>>language reference at hand to check.
>>
>>Yes..... the C language will follow all precedence rules, all the time..
>
>
>We're not talking here about precedence, Tony. "*" and "/" have the SAME
>precedence.

"Precedence rules" are often taken to include associativity as well. Binary
* and / are left associative which means that a subexpression that appears
between two of these will be bound to the left hand operator.

>What I'm asking is, given the expression "a*b/c", is there anything in the
>language definition which says that this will be evaluated as:
>
>    (a*b)/c

Yes, the associativity rules say that be will be bound to the left hand
operator. Some operators are right associative e.g.

  *p++

is interpreted as 

  *(p++)

and

  a = b = c

is interpreted as

  a = (b = c)

>or is the compiler free to evaluate it as:
>
>    a*(b/c)
>
>if it wishes to do so?

Not if it can produce a different result which is typically the case
when division is involved.

-- 
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Lawrence Kirby | fred@genesis.demon.co.uk
Wilts, England | 70734.126@compuserve.com
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