> Forget the religious wars. However, I'm up for a friendly discussion. There
> are many pages and talks on coding styles. It amazing how pissy some people
> can get over where to put your curly brackets for loops and if texts. Here
> is my opinion on what has been said so far...
:>
> > in addition.. i hate the "->" syntax.
> >
> > event->eType to me is better written as:
> > (*event).eType
>
> I have found a few compiler bugs where I needed to do the latter to get the
> right object code.
wow.. you never know what you find these days.. maybe i never saw
these bugs because i always use the (* ..) :>
> > i teach C at the university.. and you would not believe the
> > confusion of using ->, they understand (*event), as it works
> > the same for primitive types and structures..
> >
> > &var -> the address of
> > *var -> whats at the address of
>
> Personally I have never had any problem with the arrow syntax. It is very
> intuitive to me. I just think to myself, "I am now pointing to this variable
> that the pointer knows the base address of to get the value."
of course i tell them what it means.. but when you start.. a common
base is required.. once that common base is established.. then you
can go into the "extra" bits and pieces..
the same argument applies when you teach students:
i++ and ++i
i teach them i=i+1 first.. then once they understand it.. i can go
into the particulars of the different syntax - in this case, use and
then increment and increment first, then use.
> I know pointers can get hairy but learning the syntax is needed. One good
> test question is to give a student is a four level deep structure / union /
> class combo and tell them to write a line that gets a variable four levels
> deep just by having a reference to the base of an instance of the structure.
> Yes, I do code like that and it is very handy in real time stuff!
(* (* (* struct).substruct).subsubstruct).attribute
hmm.. ok.. bit messy.. :>> it would be much easier written as
struct->substruct->subsubstruct->attribute
but it is always good to see BOTH styles :>
> > simple case.. :> works perfectly.. of course i tell them that
> > "->" can be used too..
>
> "A pointer is a variable in which the contents of that variable is the
> address of another variable. Hence, it 'points' to something."
>
> I have never see the word "pointer" cleared down to its original reference in
> any the programming courses I have taken or texts read. This cleared things
> up for a lot of people that was confused on the subject when I was teaching
> them.
ok.. this is what i teach them:
---
7.1 Pointer Variable Declarations
Pointers are variables that contain a memory address. The address
address stored in a pointer variable references a portion of memory
that is used to store another data type.
---
i guess that says the same thing :> just different words :))
> > religious war? hehe.. well.. you DONT have to use the typedefs :>
> > but... you should try and keep your code looking "similar" in
> > style to the base system - which is 3Com's code.
>
> That I don't agree with. We'd be doing COBOL on a Palm if we kept with
> that. Hmmm .... I'm sure someone will try to do it. Not I! :)
what i meant to say was '3Com' wrote the C header files.. if you
are going to distribute source code.. to make understanding better
from the developer base.. consistancy in style should be applied.
cheers.
az.
--
Aaron Ardiri
Lecturer http://www.hig.se/~ardiri/
University-College i G�vle mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
SE 801 76 G�vle SWEDEN
Tel: +46 26 64 87 38 Fax: +46 26 64 87 88
Mob: +46 70 656 1143 A/H: +46 26 10 16 11
