3 ms·

Yeah. C is a boring language that barely ever changes. But I'm not sure there isn't wisdom in being dull.

• nitrogen 12y ago
  Compound literals in C are awesome like it's 1999: Assuming you have this: struct point { float x, y, z; }; void do_something_with_point(struct point *p); You can do this: do_something_with_point(&(struct point){.x = 1.5, .y = 1.5, .z = 3.5});
  • mtdewcmu 12y ago
    You can take the address of a literal? Being able to specify a literal for a struct is useful. You can, for instance, put the literal in a macro and use the macro to initialize or reset a struct. It's better than having to write additional functions to do something trivial.
    • nitrogen 12y ago
      Yes, you can. You can use it to create an approximation of named parameters, because struct members that don't have an initializer will default to zero. It's still not nearly as compact as, say, Ruby, but for C it's pretty awesome and fast.
      • mtdewcmu 12y ago
        That's interesting. You know you can pass structs by value, too, so I'm not sure how necessary it is to take the address.
        • nitrogen 12y ago
          It can be useful for an API that expects pointers for whatever reason.