Your claim of having a "faulty" memory suggests you think that 'better' programmers have memorized all the rules.

What my claim suggests is that I'm an old geezer. You are reading too much into my semi-serious comment -- I should have put some smileys in there. :-)

Really, I've been programming for about 30 years now, over 20 in C, and in the early days IIRC C compilers weren't quite standardized on precedence. Even in modern times and in perl, I found out the hard way (as the original OP of this thread) that precedence works the way you think it should 99% of the time, but there are times when it will bite you. Those times are almost not worth risking since they can be very subtle to debug -- and you feel like a total idiot when you find your mistake. FWIW, In reality I use as few parens as I can get away with and not start worrying.

Trust Larry more! Use parens less!

I do, trust me -- I don't whip them out like a crazed lisp programmer. A few more parens isn't going to cause a meltdown.

In reply to Re^3: not 'another victim of precedence' ? 'It is true' : 'the code is false' by bluto
in thread not 'another victim of precedence' ? 'It is true' : 'the code is false' by bobf

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