Ideas from the Chapel language (swap)

[Derek Parnell]

On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:55:05 +0900, Bill Baxter wrote:

> I find it hard to believe that a compiler couldn't recognize that this 
> is a swap operation:
>     tmp = a;
>     a = b;
>     b = tmp;
> 
> If it's not harder than I think for some reason, then it's not really 
> needed in the language.

Maybe it could, but that's not the point of a programming language. A
programming language is for people, not computers, to read. It is whole lot
easy to recognise "swap(a,b)" or even "a<->b" as a swapping operation than
three lines of code.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
skype: derek.j.parnell