I can't think of an application in C where using = deliberately in an if statement is in any way consistent with writing clear and easy-to-follow software.

I agree, the language (and its many derivatives) is littered with silliness like that.

 

I agree, the language (and its many derivatives) is littered with silliness like that.

Better silly than unsuitable.

 

Using = for assignment was a poor decision really, right there is where stuff started go down the wrong path.

A statement like

a = a + 1

is nonsensical, mathematically false.

Would you prefer Pascal?
a := a + 1

or APL?
a ← a + 1

 

I can't think of an application in C where using = deliberately in an if statement is in any way consistent with writing clear and easy-to-follow software.

Something's in software that directly interfaces with hardware are neither clear, well structured or easy to follow. That's what code comments are for.

 

Would you prefer Pascal?
a := a + 1

or APL?
a ← a + 1

it would have to be a:=a+1, because my keyboard doesn't have a ←.
I seem to remember that Commodore PETs did.

 

I can't think of an application in C where using = deliberately in an if statement is in any way consistent with writing clear and easy-to-follow software.

Examples were given earlier in the thread.

As with any notation, it looks odd and awkward at first, but once you gain a level of comfort and familiarity with it, it becomes much more clear and easy to follow. The same is true for the notation for logical operators, for the distinction between them and bitwise operators, and especially for something like the ternary operator.

 

One should not be too pedantic over the meaning of an innocent looking expression such as:

a = a + 1

In other programming languages, it could take on a much different meaning. For example, what would be the outcome if a were a character string, array, matrix?

 

Would you prefer Pascal?
a := a + 1

or APL?
a ← a + 1

These are options of course. C was created at a time when ASCII (and IBM's EBCDIC) was the only choice, today we have Unicode so the APL-like arrow is now a no-brainer. I designed a grammar a year ago, and incorporated optional Unicode symbols for several operators, like rotate left/right, assignment ( ⇐ ), XOR and so on, because there's no longer any good reason not to do so.

https://github.com/Steadsoft/imperium/blob/main/grammar/Antlr/ImperiumLexer.g4#L231

 

One should not be too pedantic over the meaning of an innocent looking expression such as:

a = a + 1

In other programming languages, it could take on a much different meaning. For example, what would be the outcome if a were a character string, array, matrix?

Yes you're right, we shouldn't be pedantic, we're all used to this too by now. This reminds me though of a gripe I have about many assembly languages. Too many use MOV when in reality COPY is a better term, I've had intelligent people literally get confused, thinking that MOV implies the bits go from one place to another with the source bits then getting automatically set to all zeroes, COPY would be so much better.

 

Have a look at the APL operators. APL was invented by a mathematician Kenneth E. Iverson in the 1960s using mathematical notation.

For example,
!A is factorial of A
A ! B is number of combinations of B in A.

 

Have a look at the APL operators. APL was invented by a mathematician Kenneth E. Iverson in the 1960s using mathematical notation.

For example,
!A is factorial of A
A ! B is number of combinations of B in A.

I'm a huge admirer of APL and Iverson, like LISP every aspiring programmer should spend time with APL to enhance how one perceives problems, data and solutions. I used APL regularly in the 1980s, it was available on our IBM mainframe with dedicated keyboard too.

Have you seen this?

https://tryapl.org/?tab=3

 

Here's Iverson's original paper https://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf

 

Something's in software that directly interfaces with hardware are neither clear, well structured or easy to follow.

Like what? C often obfuscates one's intent, makes the simple look complex, take the language's approach to strings for example, concatenation is silly.

In an MCU all one can typically do is read/write to peripheral registers, that's it, read/writes from/to memory, what's not clear in that paradigm? it's just data like reading/writing to a DB or comms channel or whatever.