22 Jun
2006
22 Jun
'06
11:27 p.m.
Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
REXX has more than it's share of punctuation.
'~' essentially replaces C's '!'
it shares the '==' operator, adds exponentiation via '**'
replaces C's '%' with '//'
adds '||' for concatenation
'/*' comments
semicolons to separate statements on the same line
(though C requires semicolons for "all" statements)
'%' for integer division
periods to separate "elements"/records/members of compound variables
parens for function invocations
colons to delimit label clauses
Plus, I recall lots of quoting when writing REXX scripts.
OTOH, I don't recall *braces* used anywhere :>
> It was
thus said that the Great Don Y once stated:
>> So, the question: are (were) there any useful languages
>> designed that did not rely heavily on punctuation in their
>> syntax? It almost seems an inconsistency -- older languages
>> tended to be skimpy in their syntax (e.g., short identifiers,
>> global scope, etc.) which would suggest that punctuation
>> exploits would be MORE valuable to them.
REXX.