C question

[mwm at ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA]

In article <5272 at tektronix.UUCP> paulh at tektronix.UUCP (Paul Hoefling) writes:
>An inexperienced C programmer wrote a program containing the following:
>	x = x++;
>Assuming that x originally had the value 5, what should the value be after
>execution of the above expression ?

Either 5 or 6, depending on the phase of the moon and the mood of the
compiler. That expression, like such things as:

	y = funct(x, x++) ;

	y = &x ;
	x = funct((*y)++) ;

and other, cuter problems, are indeterminate. If you want your code to
be portable, you don't use such things. C is just full of goodies like
this, but so are most other languages.

	<mike