In C, why is the * operator both reference and type casting?
cperciva: Substitute the obvious character for $%^& below -- I couldn't figure out how to convince HN that I wasn't just delimiting italics.What was the historical reason for using the $%^& operator for both things?I think the argument was that it allows you to say "foo is a pointer to an integer" == (int $%^&) foo == int ($%^& foo) == "that which is pointed to by foo, is an integer".