Re: Top 10 most common hard skills listed on resumes...

On 08/09/2024 09:58, Michael S wrote:

On Sun, 8 Sep 2024 05:44:16 +0200
Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:
 

On 06.09.2024 13:34, Bart wrote:

>
In more complicated cases in languages, then some asymmetry does
come up. For example, suppose C allowed this (my language allows the
equivalent):
>
    (c ? a : b) = x;

>
In Algol 68 you can write
>
     IF c THEN a ELSE b FI := x
>
or, in a shorter form, as
>
     ( c | a | b ) := x
>
if you prefer.
>

 Are you sure?
It seems to me that you got it backward.
 

The point here is that you can write such a 2-way select on the LHS of an assignment. C doesn't allow that unless you wrap it up as a pointer expression:
   *(c ? &a : &b) = x;
In language like C, the LHS of an assignment is one of four categories:
   A = Y;         // name
   *X = Y;        // pointer
   X[i] = Y;      // index
   X.m = Y;       // member select
A is a simple variable; X represents a term of any complexity, and Y is any expression. (In C, the middle two are really the same thing.)
Some languages allow extra things on the LHS, but in C they can be emulated by transforming the term to a pointer operation. In the same it can emulate pass-by-reference (which objects which are not arrays!)