Origins of == in C

jpowers@ti.com (John Powers)
Thu, 20 Jul 1995 15:51:44 GMT

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
Origins of == in C jpowers@ti.com (1995-07-20)
Re: Origins of == in C D.Chappell@biochem.usyd.edu.au (Doug CHAPPELL) (1995-07-25)
Re: Origins of == in C Brendan.Gowing@cs.tcd.ie (Brendan Gowing) (1995-07-26)
Re: Origins of == in C peter.schurek@banyan.siemens.co.at (1995-07-28)
Re: Origins of == in C schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (1995-07-31)
Re: Origins of == in C jmccarty@spdmail.spd.dsccc.com (1995-08-01)
Re: Origins of == in C det@sw.stratus.com (David Toland) (1995-08-03)
[1 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: jpowers@ti.com (John Powers)
Keywords: C, design, question, comment
Organization: Texas Instruments
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 15:51:44 GMT

The distinction between = and == in C has caused me no end of
grief. I read in the introduction to _The C Programming
Language_ by K&R that C's ancestory is BCPL -> B -> C. BCPL used
:= for assignment and = for comparison. Could someone point me
to a definition of B or explain how (and why) assignment and
comparison migrated from what I consider a much safer form to
the current error-prone form.


Thanks, John Powers jpowers@ti.com
[My recollection is that they used = for assignment because it's a lot more
common than comparison. Besides, it's Fortran-compatible. -John]
--

Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.