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From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: _BitInt(N)
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:23:23 -0800
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bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
> On 28/11/2025 02:33, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
[...]
>> You can of course add as many commodity features to "your language"
>> as you like. I seem to recall that one of the design principles of
>> "C" was to not add too many keywords. (Not sure whether 'A.odd' is
>> a function or keyword above [in "your language"].)
>
> It is a reserved word, which means it can't be used as either a
> top-level user identifier, or a member name. With extra effort, it
> could be used for both, but that needs some special syntax, such as
> Ada-style "A'odd"; I've never got around to it.
>
> In Pascal (where I copied it from) it is a reserved word.

<OT>In Pascal, "odd" is not a reserved word.  It's the name of a
predefined function.</OT>

[...]

>> PS: BTW, I was always wondering why Pascal and Algol 68 supported
>> 'odd' but not 'even'! - In the documents of the Genie compiler we
>> can read: "This is a relic of times long past.", but beyond that
>> it doesn't explain why it's a "relic". I can only guess that it's,
>> as a special case, considered just unnecessary in the presence of
>> the modulus operator.
>
> Maybe because you can trivially define 'even' as 'not odd'.

Or maybe because odd(n) can be implemented as "treat the low-order bit
of the argument as a Boolean".

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */