Re: Warning: Religious naming convention discussion :-) [was: assign help!!]

[ohk@fandango2-ether.nta.no (Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen FOU.TD/DELAB)]

In article <dewar.863575928@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

   Bob Duff said

   <<4. Array indexing is defined in terms of pointer arithmetic.
   (Well, I admit this is a rather weak reason.)>>


   Actually I think that's a bit backwards, I would say that pointer arithmetic
   in C is defined in terms of indexing in some sense. A pointer in C is
   conceptually a pair (base address, offset), and pointer arithmetic adjusts
   the offset, which is closely related to an array index.
   (indeed it is EXACTLY what COBOL would call an array index :-)

   But I agree with some of your other reasons, although I do not agree
   that pointers and arrays are synonymous in C, it is just that there
   are implicit coercions between these two types.

From "The C programming language", 2. ed., page 99:

"The correspondence between indexing and pointer arithmetic is very
close. By definition, the value of a variable or expression of type
array is the address of element zero of the array."

and further:

"In short, an array-and-index expression is equivalent to one written
as a pointer and offset"