santosh <santosh.k83@gmail.com> writes:
> Franz Hose wrote:
>> last week in class I witnessed somebody reading a C program to
>> another person and they were having some difficulties because of
>> different pronunciation of some C language terms...so how do
>> professional programmers pronounce these things?
>
> Frankly code is not read aloud very often.

Agreed.

[...]

>> 3. NULL, nul (how to distinguish these two?)
>
> null pointer constant, ASCII null.

I wouldn't read NULL as "null pointer constant", since there are a
plethora of *other* null pointer constants.

>> 4. char (3 possible ways I've heard are 4a) like the 1st syllable in
>> "character", 4b) like "char coal", and 4c) like "car"
>
> I'll pick 4a

I use 4a, but I don't object to the other pronunciations.

[...]

>> 6. x = y, x == y (how to distinguish these two?)
>
> y is assigned to x, x is equal to y.

I think of "x = y" as "x assign y".

>> 7. ++x, x++, x += n
>
> preincrement x, postincrement x, x plus equals n.

There's a difference between reading C and re-interpreting it. C isn't
designed to be a spoken language, but if I'm going to read it out
loud, I prefer to keep a one-to-one correspondence between the text
and what I say. So: "x plus plus", "plus plus x", "x plus equals n".

>> 8. argc, argv
>
> Aey-Aar-Gee-Cee, Aey-Aar-Gee-Vee.

"arg-cee", "arg-vee". I wouldn't pronounce each letter without a very
good reason.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center <*> <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"