Hi,
Well, it comes from the management of the square braces.
2["abcde"];
is equivalent to (from the compilers point of view) to
*(2 + "abcde");
which is
*("abcde" + 2);
which is the character 'c';
which is definately legal.
There was general agreement from the discussion on this code that anyone
who wrote code like the above should be fired immediately.
=====================
Yes, with C you can make spaghetti.
However, think carefully. I would suggest that almost any language allows
you to make spaghetti. There will always be someone on the staff that
writes code in a fashion that is hard to read and debug.
Great projects have been written in C (which are not spaghetti). The
reason? The authors worked hard at readability and cleanness etc. This
takes effort, but pays huge dividends.
Derek.
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> > Is the following line of code legal?
> >
> > 2["abcde"];
>
> Not for anyone caring about legibility. The string inside the []
> translates into a pointer to an array of char. Pointers as array index
> aren't right, there should be an offset from the base pointer of the
> array, so I'd say, not legal. The 2 is a constant, there should be an
> identifier which gives a pointer to which the array index is added.
>
> Knowing C, of course any spaghetti goes. So the 2 is the pointer to the
> first element of the array, to which the pointer to the const char
> string array, if it can be converted to integer, is added. So it could
> work. Unfortunately. Or there is hope that newer compilers put a stop to
> this nonsense.
>
> Volker
>
>
--
Derek Smithies Ph.D.
IndraNet Technologies Ltd.
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph +64 3 365 6485
Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/
