The use of that construct is mainly a stylistic choice. On any compiler from this millennium there should be no difference in the code that it produces.

Yep so if we're going with style I'm very happy with the functions dashed off there. Nobody will confuse those even when very, very tired (similar effect on the brain to being drunk). There is zero difference in the generated output. Calling those functions tells you exactly what they are and what they do. Vertical space is not an issue at all with 3 line functions.

Relying on post-increment? Make sure it's a one line block that is totally unbraced with only single letter variable names if you do it because otherwise it's just faux-macho C and that's /weak/.

> Make sure it's a one line block that is totally unbraced with only single letter variable names if you do it because otherwise it's just faux-macho C and that's /weak/.

I think you're projecting. The point being made was that when you're writing a simple stack (as you often might do in C, since the standard library and the language itself conspire against providing you one) and you don't have the overhead to write multiple functions to wrap it up (vertical space is an issue when you make more than one of these–trust me, I used to write Java and every thing about it was just a papercut in verbosity), the post- and pre-increment versions are concise, idiomatic, and–to be honest–more clear simply because they use the operators in the way that they are meant to be used. I can glance at them and see, OK, this one gives me whatever the stack is pointing to and then makes it point to the next element; this one first moves the pointer to the next element (which is free) and sets it. All in one line. There's nothing to show off here, this is just how you write C; those operators exist for exactly this purpose (and IMO single letter variable names are generally only a good idea in the smallest of scopes, and I personally use braces even when optional).

Sorry no. That's not for you in particular that's just a general comment on macho C, which I think we've all seen.

    int abc(int a, int b, int c)
    {

    }

I can do postincrement. I learned C the macho way. We all still have to read that crap. Now I know better when I'm writing it. I strongly disagree that

   a = *stack--;
   *++stack = b

is better in any way beyond "I'm a macho C guy" than

    a = pop_int();
    push_int(b);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff%27s_device

It's fun when you first see it. Sure.

Now the stack pointer is hidden. Is there only a single global stack?

I agree with saagarjha, there is nothing unclear or "crap" about using basic operators in an idiomatic way.

If we're being serious about a stack you really /need/ to access through functions so you can switch on and off instrumentation, eg bounds check & backtrace on failure, poison etc.

But this is as much beside the point under discussion as global pointers you raise.

Post-increment is an artefact from PDP-11 assembler and maps to a single instuction there. That's where it came from quite directly. It's completely unnecessary. Most modern languages find it useless enough they remove it. Python goes fine without it relying on +=, for example. (Although some do repeat C mistakes when basing their syntax on C, eg the unbraced, single line block that serves only to add non-zero probability of introducing a future bug but with the benefit of precisely nothing.. Hi Walter! Larry Wall cops flack for Perl syntax but he did not copy that.)

Post increment is hardly the end of the world it just isn't useful. It doesn't help readability. It can harm it. As a question of taste I find it lacking.

But hey, everyone else uses it, and duff's device is fun to read so go with them, knock yourself out.