flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) (11/26/89)
>daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes: >> Should I change all such assignments to include an additional set of parens? cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) writes: >This may or may not quiet the compiler, but it does nothing to assure the >reader of the intended operator. On the contrary, I've seen this exact practice recommended, here and elsewhere, and now use it all the time. I think a good way to think of it is that you never directly test the assignment as an expression, but you can make it into a more complicated expression in any way you like, including just parenthesizing an extra level. Putting in a "!= 0" is especially bad if the value is conceptually boolean, because then you are using a double negative, which is always confusing. ajr -- "Learning algorithms from Knuth is almost as bad as learning physics from Newton in the Latin original." -- Jeffrey Kegler