🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ldpoc1INNbe7@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> corbett@lupa.Eng.Sun.COM (Robert Corbett) writes:

> >I just ran a quick measurement on a convenient sample of 85,000 lines of
> >C and C++ code.  Based on this sample "**" appears on average about once
> >per every 200 lines of code.  This is a pretty high occurance.
...
> I find it hard to believe that there are that many instances of
> multiplication following indirect referencing.  How many of those
> instances of ** are of the form
> 
> /*
> **  Commentary
> */
> ?

I can't speak for Jim (I haven't seen the code that he used for his
sample), but my guess is that most of the **'s he found weren't
comments, but, rather, double pointer dereference.  (For example, how
many times has the sequence **argv occurred in your programs?)

This wouldn't cause any direct ambiguity with ** as an exponentiation
operator, since exponentiation is an infix operator.  However, note
that it would still be necessary to define unary ** as a new operator
meaning double pointer dereference.  The parser would interpret ** as
a single token, whether it appears in a unary or a binary context.

There are a few expressions that would have their meaning changed if
we made ** into an operator---probably rare ones, but I'm sure that
they do crop up occasionally in real code.  (a/b**c, for example) I
think we probably would be better off using a different token for
exponentiation.
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
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