[comp.lang.c] oops...

levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) (04/26/88)

> Before
> trying to dump on DEC a la IBM, however, keep in mind that IBM sells primarily
> to business customers, who don't know a goto from a RAM chip, whereas DEC
> sells primarily to technical installations and research institutions.

Oops.  Someone pointed out to me that DEC's biggest VMS market is commercial,
not technical.  Seems hard to believe in the face of IBM's stranglehold on that
market, but I'll take it at face value.  Darn all those insurance companies
and banks, they had to go buy DEC and make me look like a fool. :-)

To the best of my knowledge:  my point still stands to the effect that DEC has
a helluva lot of VMS VAXes out there in technical fields, and that there are
far more VAXes in those fields running VMS than are running the UNIX operating
system, if a survey in a not-too-ancient _DEC_Professional_ is to be believed.

(Though on behalf of AT&T, I hope this will evolve to be the other way around,
or even better, VMS VAXES will eventually be outnumbered by 3B4000s or their
successors running UNIX System V [dreamin' on...] :-) ).
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blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson) (04/26/88)

In article <2615@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>far more VAXes in those fields running VMS than are running the UNIX operating
>system, if a survey in a not-too-ancient _DEC_Professional_ is to be believed.

A survey in a VMS publication indicates most of its readers use VMS is
hardly surprising or any kind of indication of the ratio of VMS to
UNIX vaxen.
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walterm@hpwrce.HP.COM (Walter Murray) (05/17/91)

steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage) writes:

> aj3u@wilbury.cs.virginia.edu (Asim Jalis) writes:

>>What is the difference between these two (pf is a pointer to a
>>function, and hello is a function):

>>pf = hello;	
>>and 
>>pf = &hello;

> There is no difference.  The oddity is this:  A function designator
> appearing in an expression context is replaced by the address of the
> function, making a pointer-to-function.  Attempts to take the address
> of the function designator are ignored. So
> 	hello
> 	&hello
> 	&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&hello
> are all equivalent.

I would say that an attempt to take the address of a function
designator is honored, but is unnecessary because it's a conversion that
is done automatically anyway.  

And the third example has problems.  First, && will be taken as a
logical AND operator, resulting in a syntax error.  We can correct
that by writing:

   & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & &hello;

But it seems to me this is still illegal.  When & is applied to
a function designator, the result is a pointer to a function and
is not an lvalue.  This pointer-to-function does not get converted
back to a function designator.  Applying the next & should cause a
diagnostic, because the operand of & must be either a function
designator or an lvalue, and &hello is neither.  Relevant
sections in the Standard are 3.2.2.1 and 3.3.3.2.

> Similarly, when you dereference a pointer-to-function, you get a
> function designator, which is replaced by pointer-to-function.
> Consequently,
> 	pf()
> 	(*pf)()
> 	(****************pf)()
> are all equivalent.

Right.


Walter Murray
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