Exceptional C++ Style 40 New Engineering Puzzles, Programming Problems, and Solutions

Chapter 33. Operators, Operators Everywhere

Difficulty: 4

How many operators can you put together, when you really put your mind to it? This Item takes a break from production coding to get some fun C++ exercise.

JG Question

1. What is the greatest number of plus signs (+) that can appear consecutively, without intervening whitespace, in a valid C++ program?

   Note: Of course, plus signs in comments, preprocessor directives and macros, and literals don't count. That would be too easy.

Guru Question

1. Similarly, what is the greatest number of each of the following characters that can appear consecutively, without whitespace, outside comments in a valid C++ program?

   1. &

   2. <

   3. |

   For example, for (a), the code if(a && b) trivially demonstrates two consecutive & characters ...