From: Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>
Subject: Re: About conversions
Date: 2000/11/22
Date: 2000-11-22T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <8vgoek$p1r$1@nnrp1.deja.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 8vfjhn$t4e$1@nnrp1.deja.com
In article <8vfjhn$t4e$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <8vetq2$bkb$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Why is it confusing? Simple, most people think of conversions
> as basically function calls, and it is peculiar to have a
> function call as an Lvalue. (peculiar in Ada as well, and indeed
I prefer to think of them as a kind of in-line compiler directive, in
effect saying "think of this object as really being of this type". I
generally tell this to others as well, since thinking of it as a
function call leads people to the erronious conclusion that the
conversion is liable to have some kind of subprogram-like overhead.
From this point of view, *not* allowing it for "out" parameters would be
confusing. (And yes, to this way of thinking it is a bit odd that you
can't use it on the left side of an assignment).
> -14 mod 5
Not a chance. I don't think I've ever needed to use "mod" for negative
numbers, so I would definitely have to look it up. That's just a matter
of use though. If I had to do it all the time, I'm sure I'd know it just
as well as a heavy C coder knows how to properly use the "?" operator.
Pretty much the only time I ever use "mod" is to index into circular
data structures. Occasionly I'll use it to effect a bit mask on an
unsigned value. There's probably a use for applying it to signed values,
but I haven't encountered it in 11 years.
--
T.E.D.
http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2000-11-22 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2000-11-20 0:00 About conversions Sandro Binetti
2000-11-20 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
2000-11-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-11-20 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
2000-11-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-11-21 0:00 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2000-11-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-11-21 0:00 ` Ted Dennison
2000-11-22 3:27 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2000-11-22 4:54 ` Robert Dewar
2000-11-22 0:00 ` Ted Dennison [this message]
2000-11-22 0:00 ` Wes Groleau
2000-11-22 0:00 ` Tristan Gingold
2000-11-24 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen
2000-11-24 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen
2000-11-21 2:57 ` DuckE
2000-11-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2000-11-23 6:21 Christoph Grein
2000-11-23 0:00 ` Wilhelm Spickermann
2000-11-23 0:00 ` Florian Weimer
2000-11-23 0:00 ` Wilhelm Spickermann
2000-11-28 2:20 ` Robert Dewar
2000-11-24 0:00 Christoph Grein
2000-11-28 1:33 ` Robert Dewar
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