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Article #9618Must casting destroy lvalueness?
From: NET-RELAY.ARPA
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1986 22:11
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1986 22:11
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1662 bytes
I'm relatively new to info-c and don't know if you've had this debate
so just banish me to the archive if you have.
C pedants claim that casting destroys lvalueness. Their argument is
essentially that they can imagine a machine on which casting forces
the use of a temp so lvalueness is gone.
C users, on the other hand, find they have to program real machines not
hypothetical ones and that almost all of these real machines don't use a
temp when casting. For example, a useful and readable way to move a pointer
through a buffer containing a mixture of objects of different sizes is
((OBJECT)pointer)++
This construct is disallowed by Harbison's compiler.
I fear that the C standards committee is going to take away such practical
constructs and turn production quality C compilers into academic quality
ones. Who knows, there may develop a brisk business in C compilers that
promise NOT to be standard conforming.
How sayeth the C standard committee? How sayeth the users?
Regards, Scott
"You can hack any formalism so why not have useful formalisms?"
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Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!brl-adm!brl-smoke!smoke!ASCVX5::GUTHERY%slb-test.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA From: NET-RELAY.ARPA>@brl-smoke.ARPA Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Must casting destroy lvalueness? Message-ID: <4763@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: Mon, 20-Oct-86 18:11:17 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-smok.4763 Posted: Mon Oct 20 18:11:17 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 03:21:16 EDT Sender: news@brl-smoke.ARPA Lines: 26