Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 23:42:21 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: Sheldon Hearn <axl@iafrica.com> Cc: Mikhail Teterin <mi@kot.ne.mediaone.net>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: btokup().. patch to STYLE(9) (fwd) Message-ID: <36B1C8CD.159C3575@newsguy.com> References: <88592.917598420@axl.noc.iafrica.com>
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Sheldon Hearn wrote: > > As far as I see it, there are a lot of people who are saying > > "I want to use parens to improve readability" > > when what they really mean is > > "I want to use parens to obviate the need to learn operator precedence." > > I can't imagine how unnecessary parens are going to improve > "readability" for anyone who knows his/her operator precedence. What > it does is allow folks who aren't sure about what they're doing to get > around doing things properly. The human mind (at least the *normal* ones :) can handle a limited number of items simultaneously. If an expression has more than five "items" to be taken into account, you are already exceeding this limit for some folks (though suspect most "heavy" programmers "happen" to have higher capacities). And while expressions with more than five *operators* to be taken into account might be uncommon, it is not unusual for one also have to take into account what's between them. Just because it might be easy for you, it doesn't mean it is easy for others, or even that is something one can learn. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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