🚀 go-pugleaf

tanmoy@qcd.lanl.gov (Tanmoy Bhattacharya) wrote:
>In article <4797ni$avq@news0.rain.rg.net>, Paul Long <plong@perf.com> writes:
[snip]
>|> This is off-topic (not Standard-C related), but why do most
>|> programmers use parentheses around the value in a return
>|> statement? They are absolutely not needed, and I think it looks a
>|> lot cleaner without them. A colleague of mine said that she
>
>Wasn't it needed in some early versions of C? Maybe it is a frozen piece of
>history.

From "A brief(ish) description of BCPL" by Clive, it looks like a return value
is specified in BCPL with the RESULTIS command, which apparently doesn't
require parentheses (the RETURN command doesn't specify a return value). Alan
Watson posted an article in comp.lang.c that contains "very old C" that does
not have parentheses around the return-statement operand. Mark Brader posted an
article in comp.lang.c that contains this line in B:
   return (f);  /* at least, I think the () were required */
[His comment.]

(You guys have any further comment?)

It's interesting to note that in the code examples in K&R1, the return value is
always enclosed in parentheses, whereas in K&R2, the return value is _never_
enclosed in parentheses. The grammar in both versions show that parentheses are
not required.

This is what I bet happened: B may have required parentheses or at least this
was the convention. From the start, C did not require parentheses, but K&R1
showed the world code that had parentheses in return statements. K&R changed
their minds by K&R2, but the public hasn't picked up on the shift yet.

-- 
Paul Long                               45:29:14N 122:48:09W
plong@perf.com                          http://www.teleport.com/~pciwww/
    "Where time or intelligence are lacking, a goto may do the job."
        - M.E. Hopkins, "A Case for the GOTO," 1972.