extra parens are confusing

[tektronix!tekecs!kenr]

Pshaw!  The notion that extra parentheses make C code
unreadable is elitist foofaraw in the truest sense of the
phrase.  Anyone in the situation of maintaining C programs
on Unix brand operating systems has seen enough math and
computer science to understand parenthesization. I'm not
advocating wholesale parenthesization here, but I cannot
believe that a few sets of parentheses in a few ambiguous
situations will cause unreadability.

In fact, I think C novices should be *taught* to use
some extra parentheses, especially when they're using pointers.
How many stupid (s-t-u-p-i-d) pointer errors have we all
made, especially in our early careers, by misremembering
operator precedence?  I think it's worth the extra
time and memory during compilation to minimize silly
errors of that nature.

Your pal,

Ken Rhodes