Having fun abusing the C language
<i>>, subscripts are just adding to pointers, and since addition is commutative, then so is the subscript operator. [...]
A lot to unpack from such little code, and plenty to learn.</i><p>It was over 25 years ago that I first came across the C language FAQ from the Usenet group <i>comp.lang.c</i> and it explained the "commutative property" of array subscripts. (Online version here:  <a href="http://c-faq.com/aryptr/joke.html" rel="nofollow">http://c-faq.com/aryptr/joke.html</a>).
  Another similar stackoverflow Q&A has also been done:  <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/381542/with-c-arrays-why-is-it-the-case-that-a5-5a" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/381542/with-c-arrays-why-...</a><p>Over the last 2 decades, I have <i>never</i> needed the knowledge that the C language lets you put a number outside the brackets instead of inside it.  Other than deciphering obfuscated C puzzles, I've never run across any real world source code that took advantage of that syntactic quirk.  So yes, I did learn that trivia about array subscripts -- but it was useless knowledge.