Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: flags & flagMask == flagMask can be true for flags != flagMask if flags is a superset of flagMask ? Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2022 08:12:35 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 46 Message-ID: <86pmgwtggs.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <87y1vl36c8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: reader01.eternal-september.org; posting-host="b929ed515849262cdfce88161be7e24f"; logging-data="1620190"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/I7slhG2mfsGNiYUKykmhC94zbVijO2sQ=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:m0csP+MrLGuWy76eSg6abZye9bQ= sha1:Yrr2xcAXREmAKB9TmkW3yYZn9lc= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c++:86002 Ben Bacarisse writes: > scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes: > >> Muttley@dastardlyhq.com writes: >> >>> On Thu, 18 Aug 2022 09:58:59 +0200 >>> >>>> As far as I understood that was exactly what they where aiming for. >>>> >>>> Thanks for the precedence heads-up. >>> >>> If in doubt just use brackets. They're free. >> >> Parentheses work even better. Unless bracket [] is UK >> for parentheses ()? > > Yes, in the UK "brackets" are somewhat generic (i.e. any matched pair of > symbols used to convey some extra meaning could be called brackets), but > the default meaning is "()". The pair "[]" are "square brackets" and > "{}" are "curly brackets", though "braces" has taken hold as the name > for "{}" among computer programmers. For completeness, "<>" are usually > called "angle brackets". Sometimes I refer to "<>" as "pointy brackets". > "Parentheses" is a well-understood term here, but sounds a tiny bit > pretentious! To me "parentheses" sounds natural and not at all pretentious. > Are the terms used in the USA absolutely fixed and unambiguous? > I.e. are "brackets" always "[]" even to a linguist? Speaking as someone who has grown up and lived almost all of his life in a culture and environment that uses American English almost exclusively (and yes that is the United States), I feel confident in saying that "brackets" always means "[]", and vice versa. Of course in certain contexts people will qualify the word "brackets" (round brackets, square brackets, curly brackets) in order to disambiguate different kinds of enclosing symbols. But for the most part "brackets" without any additional context means square brackets. Many years ago there was even a Peanuts cartoon where "brackets" was used to refer to the [ and ] characters.