I'm no C programmer but isn't this how you do a cool string copy:

while(*r++ = *s++);

But you are right. C code isnt inherently hard to read. It's just that there are a lot of C programmers that like to do stuff the cryptic way. Especially when naming variables and functions..

Part of the reason why I hate reading C++ tutorials that use C. Half of the time even the author will write very cryptic C that makes me spend more time trying to read the code than understand it.

-alias

You must use some arcane usage of the term self documenting that I'm not aware of, to say that this is self documenting.

while (*s != '\0'){
     *r++ = *s++;
}

Well null terminators are actually a pretty common C pattern for dealing with arrays of "unknown size". Given that snippet you might be doing a string copy... it is definitely *some kind* of memory copy operation, but there is really no telling without the rest of the code.

There is no such a thing as "self documenting".

WolfCoder, on 18 May 2010 - 07:38 PM, said:

Sure there is.

Good variable names would be self documenting.

While the earlier loop was clearly copying a string, that could be made self documenting by a few simple changes

from

while (*s != '\0'){
     *r++ = *s++;
}

to

string copyString(char *originalString)
{
     char[] copyOfString;
     while(*originalString != '\0')
     {
          copyOfString++ = originalString++;
     }
     return copyOfString;
}

(pardon I haven't used C in like a year or so. . . if context is off, sorry)

@depricated, I see your apology but, before someone takes you code seriously I should point out that it is very incorrect.

First that is not how arrays are defined in C or C++, Even if it WERE you need to specify a size or initialize it to some string literal.
Then this line: copyOfString++ = originalString++; is not even close to correct. And then the return is not very self documenting at all as you said you would return a string and then returned a char[] -- which might get converted to a string but the compiler (it should actually) but that is not very "self documenting".

I understand what you are saying that if you use proper variable naming and writing the code as though it were to be "Read" is "self documenting" -- add to that the use of comments and a tool like doxigen or javadocs and you can have some pretty good code.