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Re: C++ order of evaluation of operands, arguments
- From: Michael Matz <matz at suse dot de>
- To: David Brown <david dot brown at hesbynett dot no>
- Cc: Richard Biener <richard dot guenther at gmail dot com>, Jason Merrill <jason at redhat dot com>, GCC <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 14:16:07 +0100 (CET)
- Subject: Re: C++ order of evaluation of operands, arguments
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <56539AD0 dot 80905 at redhat dot com> <CAFiYyc2zzFFPEd27aQwjHp4q+UvDquu52CF1+sqPSs3hVjD=_A at mail dot gmail dot com> <alpine dot LSU dot 2 dot 20 dot 1511251540500 dot 11029 at wotan dot suse dot de> <5656D6F7 dot 60307 at hesbynett dot no>
Hi,
On Thu, 26 Nov 2015, David Brown wrote:
> That is all true - but if you have to pick an order that makes sense to
> users, especially of functions that are not varargs (i.e., most
> functions), then left-to-right is the only logical, natural order - at
> least for those of use who use left-to-right languages.
Exactly, what's feeling humanly natural here is cultural (and I'd argue
there's a fairly large percentage of the population who are neither ltr
not rtl, but rather top-to-bottom), and therefore ...
> really going to be a big issue? One should not limit the language just
> because of a tiny efficiency issue with rarely-used cases.
... this is the only objectively measurable dimension, and hence _that_ is
exactly how the language should be limited in such cases, if it must be
limited at all (which seems indeed a bit dubious after 30 years as the
proposal mentions itself) [1].
Ciao,
Michael.
[1] I'm trying (but failing) to not even start the argument that if the
goal is to make C++ "make more sense to users" that this already failed in
'98, got worse with later revisions, and fixating evaluation order is
helping just so slightly (if at all), that it all seems a bit ridiculous
to me.