Undoc'd Feature?

[parisse]

(07-03-2022 01:03 PM)Wes Loewer Wrote:  

(07-03-2022 11:02 AM)parisse Wrote:  Not sure I understand what you mean. a++ does this: find a in the table of variables in the current evaluation context, add 1 to this value (in place).

In other languages, a++ evaluates a then increments a, while ++a increments a then evaluates a. For instance, in C and its descendants,

I think it's bad to increment a variable and simultaneously do an assignation, because it's confusing, I never do that myself, I always do a++ or ++a standalone and that's equivalent. If you want to do both, write 2 instructions, I'm pretty certain it's translated exactly the same way by the compiler and therefore as efficient. That kind of "compact" code is more difficult to read/fix, like oneliners in interpreted languages.
Moreover evaluation is much simpler in a compiled langage like C than in a CAS. Imagine that a evaluate to a symbolic identifier b, what should mean a distinction where we evaluate before incrementing: should b be incremented instead of a?