C Builtin Functions

[KW Heuer]

In article <594 at brl-smoke.ARPA> rbj at icst-cmr (Root Boy Jim) writes:
>Hey, the more primitives, the better. I also like(d) TECO. Just because
>a language is terse, doesn't mean it's unreadable. In my opinion, people
>who laughed at the greek were just to lazy to learn the lingo. APL is
>quite readable once you get used to it, especially with direct definition.

I don't often admit it, but I like both APL and TECO.  The major flaw (of
both) seems to be that people like to "optimize" for minimal source code,
and hence go around removing "unnecessary" comments and whitespace.  (From
your comments on your C style, I'd bet that you make heavy use of APL glue
like "+0x" or ",0R", even though it's more efficient to use a newline.)

I suspect that in part this is a result of interpretation.  I've seen it in
BASIC too.  A compiled language like C is hopefully less susceptible to
obfuscation (the upcoming contest notwithstanding); I think the only real
problem with adding more operators is resolving the precedence rules.  (I
like the way APL handles that, btw.)

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint