Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ISC.COM (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: why p->member ?
Message-ID: <6031@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: 10 Aug 88 21:36:38 GMT
References: <16734@adm.ARPA> <474@sp7040.UUCP> <12937@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 13

In article <12937@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>to restate the question, `why does not p.member follow the pointer
>automagically?'  [Historical reason deleted]

People have enough trouble with the difference between pointers and arrays.
If `.' and `->' were the same operator, they'd have a similar difficulty
understanding the difference between structs and struct pointers.

Also, even those of us who understand the difference are likely to make a typo
now and then.  I prefer my typos to elicit an error message from the compiler,
rather than silently guessing what I meant.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint