Re: [groff] hyphenation issues

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Ralph,

Ralph Corderoy wrote on Sun, May 06, 2018 at 01:19:09PM +0100:

> I think those struggling with Andersons' `right left' rule, or
> equivalent, will probably find that const being allowed to shift
> position but not meaning is significant

Nobody is suggesting that it should be allowed to shift position
in general.  The general rule remains: it operates to the left.
The only, very minor addition is: It is also allowed leftmost -
and it is quite obvious in which direction it can only operate
then, so there is very little potential of confusion even for people
who struggle with the general rule.

Whereas "int const* i" (abusing C++ conventions here to maximize the
potential for confusion) is more likely to confuse people who
struggle with the basic rule.  (But again, that's not my main
argument; the main argument is that this is not relevant enough
to introduce more style fragmentation.)

> compared to those of us that have `got it'.
> If unary minus could come before or after in arithmetic,
> I think it would also trouble.

a = b--+--c; indeed.  Ken be praised.


Yours evaluation of sizeof() seems correct to me.

Thanks for the links to you posted regarding "int const",
they were interesting to see, even if i don't care that
much what Microsoft says.  :)

Regarding C++, i bought and read the Stroustrup long ago (i think
it was about 1998 or 1999) and made the same decision as you did -
more efficiently because i bought only one book.  :)

Except that groff is indeed C with classes, and that nowadays,
it is sometimes unavoidable to inspect and fix C++ code, though
it certainly isn't fun.  We recently had to scour our whole ports
tree when switching to Clang 6.  Yuck.

Yours,
  Ingo