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From: clodius@hotspec.lanl.gov (William Clodius)
Subject: Re: Ada is 'better' than C because...
Date: 1996/08/08
Message-ID: <g1u3udtrxs.fsf@hotspec.lanl.gov>#1/1
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sender: clodius@hotspec.lanl.gov
references: <01bb7bf9$b89a1740$96ee6fcf@timhome2>
organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c
Date: 1996-08-08T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <320a638d.534305610@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov>
kdq@emoryi.jpl.nasa.gov (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: 

   On 8 Aug 1996 00:22:01 -0400, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:

   >Sandy said
   >
   >"Since when was pointer arithmetic "essential"? It is simply convenient."
   >
   >Avoiding pointer arithmetic in C is pretty restrictive, it means not
   >using arrays at all (remember that in C the notation a[b] is simply
   >a shorthand for pointer arithmetic).

   That's a meaningful argument.  Based on this, all lanaguages have pointer
   arithmetic, and it ain't so.

Not quite. First when passed as an argument to a user defined function
a C array looses a lot of its distinction from a pointer, a problem
that many other languages do not have. Second, while (almost?) all
languages that have arrays have indexing, a number of languages, have
additional capabilities that C arrays lack, the ability to specify
array shape in arguments (Fortran I), and various forms of whole array
operations, APL, PL/I, Algol 68, and Fortran 90.
-- 

William B. Clodius		Phone: (505)-665-9370
Los Alamos National Laboratory	Email: wclodius@lanl.gov
Los Alamos, NM 87545