On Sat, 25 Apr 2020, Rob Pike wrote: > The ability to call a function pointer fp with the syntax fp() rather > than (*fp)() came rather late, I think at Bjarne's suggestion or > example. Pretty sure it was not in v7 C, as you observe. I have never seen that syntax used (and I've been tooling around with Unix for decades). The variable "fp" in an argument list is a pointer to the function, not the function itself, so dereference it. I wouldn't put it past Stroustrup to have it in C++ though, as it pretty much has everything else in it. > Convenient though the shorthand may be, it always bothered me as > inconsistent and misleading. (I am pretty sure I used it sometimes > regardless.) Indeed... My principle is to write code as though the next person to maintain it is a psychopathic axe-murderer who knows where you live (or perhaps even yourself, a year later)... -- Dave