Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.help
Subject: [OT] Re: Why would one use += 1 at the place of ++?
Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 08:03:28 -0400
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <ir30ui$jok$1@dont-email.me>
References: <8762p7upgn.fsf@merciadriluca-station.MERCIADRILUCA> <4t6Bp.534$pi2.511@newsfe11.iad>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 12:03:30 +0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="BrOwaJANne849xlH+KPYjQ"; logging-data="20244"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18npoi1kxgCj+6jtZBTsRlT"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110414 Thunderbird/3.1.10
In-Reply-To: <4t6Bp.534$pi2.511@newsfe11.iad>
Cancel-Lock: sha1:0DiXUADFdORU7B0wZKT5to00Rxc=
Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.help:695

On 5/19/2011 6:40 AM, David Lamb wrote:
> [...]
> I think ++ exists only because the hardware on which C was developed had
> an addressing mode that did it atomically in the very special case of
> referring to
> something = array[index++];

     FWIW, some guy named Dennis Ritchie says this is not true.

	"People often guess that [++ and --]were created to use the
	auto-increment and auto-decrement address modes provided
	by the DEC PDP-11 on which C and Unix first became popular.
	This is historically impossible, since there was no PDP-11
	when B was developed."

"B" is the language from which C inherited ++ and --, and much else.

-- 
Eric Sosman
esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid