29 Jan
2021
29 Jan
'21
12:58 p.m.
> Without OTHER changes in parsing arithmetic
expressions, that may or may
> not be warranted, just replacing the '=' being used for assignment with an
> arrow ELIMINATED that particular confusion.? Well, mostly.? You can't use
> a right pointing arrow to fix 3 = X
On Fri, 29 Jan 2021, ben via cctalk wrote:
Blame K&R with C with the '=' and
'==' mess because assignment is a
operation. I never hear that C or PASCAL have problems.
I think that it was Ritchie and Thompson who created C;
Kernighan and Ritchie documented it.
'=' and '==' makes possible what is probably the most common error, and
which the compiler doesn't catch:
if (x = 3) . . . /* sets x to 3 and gives TRUE for the condition */
I imagine that there are probably some pre-processors that would return a
WARNING for it.
I find the pseudo code often less confusing than real
languages.
the one I like best uses indentation for structure.
while k do
.if foo then
..do this thing
..do that thing
.else
..something here
.!end if
! end while
You COULD design a language around your favorite pseudo-code
structures.
I like indentation, and demanded it from my students.
while (k)
{ if (foo)
{ ..do this thing
..do that thing
}
else
{ ..something here
}
}
Even K and R did not agree on indentation styles.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com