Thread for agreeing on conventions

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Thread for agreeing on conventions

OzyMandrill: Aug 12, 2013; Look upon my words
and despair

Shadow0 posted:

Also, the & and * are part of the variable type and belong next to that, not the variable name, which it has nothing to do with.

I thought this for decades, I mean it's obvious? But then I read Stroustrup and learned it is wrong. A pointer is a special virtual thing. To turn it into an actual thing you dereference it with a star, so *(a pointer) = a thing, therefore you define a thing named (*name) then name is a pointer, cos *name is the thing. And cos if you write a list like:

code:

int a, *b, c, *d;  // Lawful Evil

then b & d are pointers to ints, and a and c are ints, and

also:

code:

int* a,b,c;  // Chaotic Evil

defines a as a pointer and b,c as ints.

There is a dedicated circle of hell for people who would use any of this in any actual code.

my mind was so blown by this obvious reasoning I forgot to look up why the '&' does the same. I think the answer for that is a because-it-does-you-wanna-start-something shrug.

OzyMandrill fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Oct 30, 2022

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Thread for agreeing on conventions