Going back through the book now for a couple details, stopped at operators.
Addition by 1 is such a common operation in programs that a special operator was created for this purpose. Therefore the expression ++i is equivalent to the expression n = n+ 1
...
Some programmers prefer to put the ++ or -- after the variable name, as n++ or counter--. This is acceptable and a matter of personal preference
Personal preference?!?!? NO DISCUSSION about the difference in behavior. So distressed was I that ++n was no different than n++ I had to throw together a quickie to test it ...
int i=1;
printf("i=%i, ", i);
printf("i=%i, ", ++i);
printf("i=%i, ", i++);
printf("i=%i\n", i);
... which provided the satisfying result of "i=1, i=2, i=2, i=3" just as it should. In chapter 13, after about 30 pages of somewhat confusing discussion about why you might want to reference an integer as a pointer rather than a regular variable then it goes into char strings and finally handles the difference between pre and post inc/dec of a value as such:
As a final example on this topic before we present a program, it textptr is a char pointer the expression *(++textptr) first increments textptr then fetches the character it points to, whereas the expression *(textptr++) fetches the character that textptr points to before its value is incremented.
Not very clear, at best.
