Fun with * and &

[Brandon Allbery]

Expires:

Quoted from <487 at cubsvax.UUCP> ["Re: C'mon, guys! (Really, pointer pedagogy)"], by peters at cubsvax.UUCP...
+---------------
| Just a quick remark.  When I was learning C, I understood that "*pi" meant "the
| contents of pi," but somehow had difficulty conceptualizing why the declaration
| "int *pi;" declares pi as a pointer to an int;  that is, I knew it was a
| convention I had to memorize, but it didn't seem mnemonic to me.  Then, about
| a month ago, revelation!:  read this as "the contents of pi is an integer;"
| which implies, "pi is that which contains (or points to)" an integer.  Somehow 
| it made thinking about the declarations easier.  It's occurred to me that maybe
| everyone else in the world sees this from day 1, but for us dumb folks, having
| this reading pointed out would probably make the learning process easier....
+---------------

Easy:  Use the Algol 68 method.  (Snide remarks about sh and adb source to
/dev/null or /dev/bourne, please.)  Translate * as ``REF''.  Then they look
like:

		int *pi;	->	int REF pi;
		x = *pi;	->	x = REF pi;

REF is, of course, short for ``reference'', which is just another word for
``pointer''.  (Note that ``x = *pi'' is really a DEREFERENCE, since you're not
merely using the ``refrence'' to the interger, but the integer itself.  That's
the confusion of C.  ``*'' -> ``REF'' is a way to remember it.)

--Brandon
-- 
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