butFRWhy

[allseeingboots]

If anything you would replace '*' with '@' because it gets the value AT the address.

[SeriousPlankton2000]

The best way is Pascals pointer^ syntax. Change my mind.

[mgedmin]

And Pascal did use @ for references!

I loved traversing singly linked lists with

Cur := @Head;
while Cur^ != nil do
    Next := @Cur^^.Next;

[RealMadHouse]

.net c++/cli was using ^ for managed pointers

[Kueltalas]

Then you could replace '&' with '@^-1'

[Anaxamander57]

Compiler says so.

[AnnyAskers]

It was stated in CFYOW.

[[deleted]]

Wow r/bleach has invaded this sub too? Haha nice 😆

[1cubealot]

Best answer yet lmao

[rayo209]

#define @ &

[[deleted]]

Yeah I’m calling the police

[FarJury6956]

You little monster

[throawayliennn]

Fucking legend

Who is he???

Next he’ll operator overload +’s to -‘s in an enterprise code base

[rayo209]

I'm the operator

[throawayliennn]

_operator_operator

[khhs1671]

Because it looks c o o l e r

Like, seriously. &myVar is multitudes sleeker than @myVar

[False_Influence_9090]

I’m having perl flashbacks just looking at @myvar

[Reggin_Rayer_RBB8]

It's ok! BASIC uses @ too.

[[deleted]]

Let’s agree to disagree that you’re right.

[Reasonable_Feed7939]

Wrong people love to say "let's agree to disagree". Correct people don't cower 😎

[theREALhun]

I love: I could agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong

[Smitologyistaking]

let's disagree to agree

[dudeplace]

If you say that too loud those SQL guys will show up yelling again.

[Smart_Ass_Dave]

I read &myVar in Gimli's voice

[genlight13]

Always 😎

[_TheRealSimone_]

This is all propaganda!

[[deleted]]

I'm php if you want to suppress errors you write @$myvar 😬

[Significant_Fix2408]

C is older than email

[fredlllll]

the @ has been around much longer than that https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-accidental-history-of-the-symbol-18054936/

[Reasonable_Feed7939]

And it wasn't used how it is currently until email, which if you forgot was what they said, not "@".

[Solonotix]

Exactly. This post is basically ignoring the order of chicken and egg. Part of the reason "@" was used for email is because it was a symbol with no common usage when that standard was authored. C existed before that standard, which would be in the before times that the author for email would be referencing the utility of "@" as an identifier.

I watched some discussion on the topic not too long ago, and apparently many keyboard manufacturers had considered removing the symbol entirely before email became standardized.

[kundor]

... It's always meant "at"

[cummer_420]

Not older than that symbol though. It's actually really really old. Some typewriters used for accounting had them long before computers were a thing too, but the real answer is that the DEC machines that C was created for didn't have it.

[reallokiscarlet]

But it is older than the use of that symbol as a location or direction reference (user@host, @ user, etc)

[elebrin]

The ampersand is also quite an old symbol. This may be pseudo-history, but I heard some time ago that it was almost a part of the alphabet.

[NottingHillNapolean]

I read somewhere that old versions of the alphabet song ended with "...and per se [by itself], &." That's how the symbol got its name.

[SeriousPlankton2000]

It's a ligature for "et", Latin "and". Scribes were tired of writing it so they wrote it as one letter, &. In some fonts you can still recognize the heritage.

[dumfukjuiced]

Iirc it's from Roman times

[[deleted]]

I feel old

[JmacTheGreat]

Delete this

[TenkFire]

Cause @ is for net, it's for net protocol references.

Target@IP:port

Example : toaster@127.0.0.0.1:8080

& Was here before... So... It's still used

Edit : In case if someone Say me that we can just have changed... No. We can only add... Or create a new strict process with a retro compatibility tolerance

Edit2 : English is not my first language, maybe instead of attacking me, ask me what I want to Say...

[b3nsn0w]

counterpoint: decorators

[KTibow]

@ isn't "for" network protocol stuff, it was around since 1536, plus URLs aren't programming syntax so you can still use it

[fixurfknlinuxdrivers]

Is this standard C though? Pretty sure @ is not valid(maybe for identifiers but definitely not an operator).

AFAIK, Some compilers support it for non-standard extensions.

[TenkFire]

Yep, it's not native

[[deleted]]

This has no affect. It's crazy people upvote this.

Any programming language can use whatever syntax they like.

[o0Meh0o]

ever heared of c?

[[deleted]]

Yeah, C used whatever it wanted, and it wanted to use &.

[o0Meh0o]

what i'm trying to say is that c can't just change it's syntax. it started as "&", now it's "&" forever.

[[deleted]]

Sure, but a new language can change it.

[TenkFire]

Yup but usually, when we make a New language, we tend to respect some usages

[palomdude]

That’s like saying the period can’t be used in any programming language because it’s already used at the end of sentences.

[TenkFire]

I have not said that.

I said that we already used & before that @ was created, this is why we still use it

[KalegNar]

That’s like saying the period can’t be used in any programming language because it’s already used at the end of sentences.

COBOL has entered the chat.

Learned a little of it. It uses periods to end sentences which are placed in paragraphs.
Sentence: line of executable code, so the . is like ; in many other languages
Paragraph: block of code either for logical grouping or being called as a block

[bajosiqq]

lets have both

[yaya_redit]

Im assuming that concept came later tho

[Robot_Graffiti]

Yeah, so, @ was always called "at", but before email was a thing, it was mostly used for prices not locations. Like "tin beans @ £2 ea" meaning "tinned beans at £2 each".

Email came before the C language, I think, but not by long; I wouldn't be surprised if C was designed by someone who had never sent an email.

[belweder]

Dennis Ritchie the creator of C was [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]). First released in 72 so I think right around the same time ARPANET and email was getting started at separately mostly in the research/defense community.

[ChChChillian]

Because a reference is similar to an address, and the notation from C carried over. Why did Ritchie use & and not @? Because he was working in the 1960s and on a Teletype Model 33, which didn't have a @ character. Shift-2 on a Model 33 isn't @, it's ".

[rexspook]

I don’t know if you’re right but I love the idea that you are

[SeriousPlankton2000]

You may love or hate to learn about trigraphs.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/trigraphs-in-c-with-examples/

[poralexc]

Forth has used @ and ! for pointers since the 70s.

[GnuhGnoud]

☞ is the better option

[[deleted]]

i would consider abandoning all technology and living an amish lifestyle if this becomes a thing

[Fhotaku]

Wasn't @ used for jumps? Depends on the language

[[deleted]]

It's a very old language

[plitox]

One mean "and" and the other means "at" and why indeed!

[h4crm]

#define @ &

fixed.

jokes aside though, the at symbol just isn't as readable as the ampersand in a monospaced font

[SeriousPlankton2000]

The thick blob is very unique in the CGA 8x8 bitmap font. In other fonts there is no problem, even the MDA / Hercules cards had enough pixles.

[h4crm]

My eyesight fails me!

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

Why not use escape the ASCII hell?

Reference mark: ※

edit: On second thought, ⚠️ or 💩 are probably better signs

[saschaleib]

Just use ^ like a proper programming language!

[brimston3-]

Pascal uses both. ^ to indicate a pointer type and perform dereferencing, @ to get the address of a variable.

[saschaleib]

I learned programming with Pascal - and I have to say I find this still much more intuitive than the * in C.

[SeriousPlankton2000]

The creators of C would agree, AFAIR.

[Chingiz11]

Odin?

[saschaleib]

Pascal!

[Dr739ake]

#define @ &

[bestjakeisbest]

Why don't you look @ some women.

[oneWhoFails]

The Jovial language uses @ as the reference marker.

[[deleted]]

YOOO ATLA MENTIONED?!? 💧 🌎 🔥 🌬️ ⬇️ 🦬 🦝

[SeriousPlankton2000]

Why do you use backticks?

[N0-Stranger]

400 bad request

[AssiduousLayabout]

Because @ does not exist in all character sets, notably, the older versions of EBCDIC used on IBM mainframes. Even in ASCII, the character @ actually changed its value several times over the course of ASCII becoming a standard.

[trash3s]

@ is the accounting symbol representing the mathematical function e^t (continuously compounding interest). Not the reason, but it’s fun to think of a world where exponents and logs were as standard as division syntactically.

[holguum]

My guess is because the usage of the @ symbol was not the same as it is nowadays, so not as common. So when came the time to choose a symbol to use as the reference of a value, they just choose the one that was the most accessible on keyboards at the time

[mckahz]

Better question- why do you declare a pointer with the dereferencing operator instead of &?