When is a cast not a cast?

[Bjorn Engsig]

In article <334.nlhp3 at oracle.nl> I wrote:
>>BTW, what is the sum of the two 'pointers' earth *russia, *southamerica :
>>58 45' 22" north, 43 45' 45" east
>>and
>>23 47' 19" south, 95 13' 18" west
>
and in article <2918 at buengc.BU.EDU> bph at buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
replied:
>what is the sum of
>23 47' 19" south, 43 45' 45" east
>and
>4
Blair, you are totally missing my point here.  I used a geometric example to
show the nonsense in adding two pointers, and as I also pointed out in that
article, the difference between two pointers is very well defined; in this
case, however, it is not a plain number but a direction and a distance, e.g.
27 degrees, 350 km.  Your supposed counter example of adding a geometric
pointer and a number is of course invalid, since you are not adding a pointer
difference (direction, distance) to a pointer.

Exactly the same was pointed out by Karl Heuer <karl at haddock.ima.isc.com>
in article <13189 at haddock.ima.isc.com>, using points in the plane [a pointer]
and vectors [a point(er) difference].

So please try to understand that adding two pointers does not yield anything
meaningful.

Let's close down the subject, there shouldn't be any more debate.
-- 
Bjorn Engsig, ORACLE Europe         \ /    "Hofstadter's Law:  It always takes
Path:   mcvax!orcenl!bengsig         X      longer than you expect, even if you
Domain: bengsig at oracle.nl           / \     take into account Hofstadter's Law"