• Kimberley Burchett <kimbly at kimbly.com> <Kimberley_member pathlink.com> Jan 17 2003
• "Carlos" <carlos8294 msn.com> Jan 17 2003
• Burton Radons <loth users.sourceforge.net> Jan 17 2003
• Russell Lewis <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> Jan 21 2003

Kimberley Burchett <kimbly at kimbly.com> <Kimberley_member pathlink.com> writes:

The expression array.length++ yields the compiler error 
"'array.length' is not an lvalue"

Is this a bug or is it intentional?


Kimberley Burchett

"Carlos" <carlos8294 msn.com> writes:

"Kimberley Burchett" <kimbly at kimbly.comKimberley_member pathlink.com>
escribió en el mensaje news:b0a8hn$j0a$1 digitaldaemon.com...
| The expression array.length++ yields the compiler error
| "'array.length' is not an lvalue"
|
| Is this a bug or is it intentional?
|
|
| Kimberley Burchett
|
|

As far as I remember, yes, it's intentional, but I don't remember the
reason. I think it was something with not allowing novices to do things like
this:

for (int i=0;i<1000;i++) {
    array.length++;
    ...
}

But someone also said that people still could do this:

for (int i=0;i<1000;i++) {
    array.length+=1; //or array.length=array.length+1, if += not supported
either
    ...
}

That's what I can remember.

—————————————————————————
Carlos Santander
http://carlos3.netfirms.com/


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Burton Radons <loth users.sourceforge.net> writes:

Kimberley Burchett  wrote:
 The expression array.length++ yields the compiler error 
 "'array.length' is not an lvalue"
 
 Is this a bug or is it intentional?


It was to prevent:

     array [array.length ++] = 45;

Which is dependent on undefined behaviour.

Russell Lewis <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> writes:

Kimberley Burchett  wrote:
 The expression array.length++ yields the compiler error 
 "'array.length' is not an lvalue"
 
 Is this a bug or is it intentional?
 
 
 Kimberley Burchett


Walter thought that
	array.length++;
hid too much complexity.  That statement can cause:
	* realloc
	* malloc/memcpy (if realloc has to move the array)
	* GC run (if malloc doesn't have space)

Personally, I wish the syntax was legal...but I don't write the compiler.