All, Developer knowledge of operator precedence and the issue of what they intended to write are interesting topics. Some experimental work is described in (binary operators only I'm afraid):
www.knosof.co.uk/cbook/accu06a.pdf www.knosof.co.uk/cbook/accu07a.pdf The ACCU 2006 experiment provides evidence that developer knowledge is proportional to the number of occurrences of a construct in source code, it also shows a stunningly high percentage of incorrect answers. The ACCU 2007 experiment provides evidence that the names of the operands has a significant impact on operator precedence choice. The data from the ACCU06 experiment might be used to select a cutoff above (ie, frequency of occurrence or developer performance) which operator pairs will not be flagged as requiring parenthesis. If GCC wanted to be even more selective it could look at the operand names before deciding whether to complain. ps. I am always on he look out for opportunities to run experiments using experienced developers. Does anybody have any suggestions for conferences I might approach? -- Derek M. Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk
