Re: simply question about syntatic sugar

[Nagaev Boris <bnagaev@...>]

On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 10:10 PM, Coda Highland <chighland@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 8:17 PM, Sean Conner <sean@conman.org> wrote:
>> So, if C (or rather, the C compilers) can tell the difference between an
>> array and a pointer to an array and still use the same syntax, then it
>> should be just as easy (or the same) for C (or rather, the C compiler) to
>> tell the difference between a struct and a pointer to a struct and use the
>> same syntax.  The only reason we have what we have now is historical [1][2].
>
> Do you really think it's safer to use identical syntax for member
> access when the two types are otherwise handled entirely differently?
> If you have two structs, assignment to one can't possibly modify the
> other; if you have two pointers, they might well be pointers to the
> same object. If you compare two structs, they might be distinct
> objects but look identical; if you compare two pointers, they'll only
> be the same if they refer to the same object. If you assign one struct
> to another one, you have two structs with the same contents; if you
> assign one pointer to another one, you leak memory and have two
> handles to the same data.
>
> It's not just historical reasons. The two types are FUNDAMENTALLY
> distinct, and the syntax should reflect that, even though the compiler
> clearly knows how to dereference both.
>
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 2:45 PM, Nagaev Boris <bnagaev@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If C used "." to dereference a pointer and get a field from a
>> structure, it would be incompatible with C++. C++ allows overriding
>> "->", which allows smart pointers and iterators. C++ compiler would
>> not tell the difference between smart pointer's methods and methods of
>> pointed value. It is impossible to override "." in C++.
>>
>>
>>
>> C would be better and cleaner language if array type removed in favor
>> of pointers.
>>
>>    void bar(int[] foo);    -->    void bar(int* foo);
>>
>> A variable created by static array declaration would be a pointer.
>>
>> sizeof(array) would not work, well and good -- it is too easy to make
>> an error using this feature.
>
> So wait. You're telling me you want to take the most dangerous feature
> in C... and make it MORE dangerous?!
>
> /s/ Adam
>

How could it be more dangerous than now? It is a false sense of
safety, since array bounds are not checked anyway, so arrays are
already as dangerous as pointers. Just to be clear, I don't propose
removing array[index] syntax sugar for *(array + index).


-- 


Best regards,
Boris Nagaev