McCarthy Evaluation ( was Re: [xml] A long URL causes SEGV)

[Reid Spencer <reid x10sys com>]

Igor,

The question's already been answered so I'll provide a little history. The construct you're referring to (the elimination of sub _expression_ computation with && and ||) is known as McCarthy Evaluation. John McCarthy is the inventor of Lisp and current professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford. He's a very accomplished AI researcher and his elimination of sub-_expression_ computation was borne from the need to make LISP efficient. It turns out that its also a staple of computer science being adopted by languages such as C, C++, Java, Algol, Pascal, .... etc. You can read to your heart's content on Mr. McCarthy's website: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/

Best Regards,

Reid


On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 06:22, Igor Zlatkovic wrote:
> Question: Who can guarantee that all compilers really behave this way? 
> Is there anything in the C spec that forces the compiler to evaluate 
> these parentheses in exactly this manner?
>
> Ciao,
> Igor

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