Evaluation of if's

[J H Woodyatt]

The pummeling I've been receiving in the mail concerning my confusion over
exactly what the ANSI standard says about assignment operations has led me
to gather my thoughts (somewhat) and ask the question I suppose is at the
bottom of my trouble. Here it is:

``When it says that the resulting value of an assignment expression is the
value stored in the left operand after the assignment has taken place, does
that mean the value *written* to the left operand, or the value that is read
(some time before the next sequence point) from the object described by the
left operand after the write has been performed?''

It's a subtle point, but it troubles me nonetheless.

I figure that the standard either explicitly states that it's the former,
it's the latter, it explicitly leaves it to the implementation, or it is
curiously silent on the matter. And, I would like to know which (without
having to go out and buy a bleeding copy of the bleeding standard).

The mail I've been getting implies that it is explicitly left to the imple-
mentation of the compiler. Is this the case?

-- 
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