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A comment on If I could change the C language....

Re:If I could change the C language... by rbonvall on Sunday August 01, 2010 @01:47PM (#1565680) 

  > I would have an exponentiation operator.
  > That operator might be:  **
  > [...]
  > It might be possible to add this to existing C now
  > since the operator is not already used.

  a ** b == a * (*b)
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Re:If I could change the C language... by prodigal_erik on Sunday August 01, 2010 @02:02PM (#1565718)
As I recall, a C compiler is not required to realize that

  a -- b
would be valid if parsed as

  a - (- b)
so creating this operator would be equally feasible. Though I don't think exponentiation is common enough to need one, especially in C where you couldn't overload it for rationals or bignums.
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Re:If I could change the C language... by mooism2 on Sunday August 01, 2010 @03:49PM (#1565932)
The point is that

    a**b
may occur in existing code, and mean

    a * (*b)
Introducing a double-star operator would break this code.
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