In message <88592.917598...@axl.noc.iafrica.com>, Sheldon Hearn writes: > > >On Fri, 29 Jan 1999 00:55:21 EST, Mikhail Teterin wrote: > >> Everybody's goal is to keep/make code readable (accusations of "trying >> to obfuscate" are silly). You, people, are just not agreeing what >> "readable" means. Hoping to aid in the ending of this thread(s), > >Thank you very much. This is _exactly_ the point here. > >As far as I see it, there are a lot of people who are saying > >"I want to use parens to improve readability" > >when what they really mean is > >"I want to use parens to obviate the need to learn operator precedence." > >I can't imagine how unnecessary parens are going to improve >"readability" for anyone who knows his/her operator precedence.
The parans have the same function as commas in most latin alphabet based languages: to convey structure. The fact that vi(1) has this neat '%' feature makes complex expressions with a couple of extra parens much easier to dissect than if there are no parens even if they are strictly speaking not needed for correct compilation of the expression in the first place. I hope you didn't mind the commas I left out of the previous sentence, they're strictly speaking not needed for understanding that sentence. -- Poul-Henning Kamp FreeBSD coreteam member p...@freebsd.org "Real hackers run -current on their laptop." FreeBSD -- It will take a long time before progress goes too far! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
