Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax)

George Merriman -- CCA/NY <MERRIMAN@ccavax.camb.com>
5 Sep 90 21:43:01 EDT

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Related articles
[6 earlier articles]
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) elsie!ado@uunet.UU.NET (1990-08-27)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (1990-08-29)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) liam@cs.qmw.ac.uk (1990-09-03)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) firth@sei.cmu.edu (1990-09-05)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) lins@apple.com (Chuck Lins) (1990-09-05)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) rob@baloo.eng.ohio-state.edu (1990-09-05)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) MERRIMAN@ccavax.camb.com (George Merriman -- CCA/NY) (1990-09-05)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) dik@cwi.nl (1990-09-06)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) dolf@idca.tds.philips.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) (1990-09-15)
Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) rhl@grendel.princeton.edu) (1990-09-06)
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: George Merriman -- CCA/NY <MERRIMAN@ccavax.camb.com>
Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc.
References: <9008202341.AA06543@llama.ingres.com> <4032@rtifs1.UUCP> <1990Aug29.140407.28378@maths.nott.ac.uk> <2753@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Sep 90 21:43:01 EDT

In article <2753@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk>, liam@cs.qmw.ac.uk (William Roberts) writes:
> [I have seen many reports that the semicolon as separator, as in Algol 60
> and Pascal, is much harder to get right than the semicolon as terminator,
> as in PL/I and C. -John]


I find it much easier to deal with semicolon-as-separator (actually
semicolon-as-sequence-operator) if I use a coding convention I first
noticed in a E. Dykstra paper:


While somesuch_boolean
         begin
             statement_1
         ; statement_2
         ; statement_3
         end


While I find this easy for me, and find the idea of
semicolon-as-sequence-operator very helpful, I don't dare use it in any real
code because the next poor sod will probably have no idea what I'm up to!
--


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