[mariodiana]

If I'm describing a hypothetical language, then I'm actually describing a hypothetical language where you wouldn't declare more than one variable per line.

It's been a long, long time since C required a programmer to declare his variables at the top, and best practice argues that you declare a variable as close to its use as possible. So, there really isn't the same case for multiple variables on one line, whereas it may have been a little more forgivable, once upon a time.

Moreover, when I was first learning C, I learned from an O'Reilly book by Steve Oualline. I remember him saying, when it came to operator precedence, that coding style that relied on the rules was a really bad idea. I think he said something like, "Multiplication and division come before addition and subtraction, and use parentheses for everything else."

My bottom line is C has a little too much "convenience" to it. (Granted, to my taste.) It goes back to my van Rossum comment. I'm against special cases and loosey-goosey stuff.