Re: The semicolon habit (was: Q: Definition of a scripting lang.)

  While I can see the merit of getting rid of the "one statement per line"
habit, in terms of being closer to natural languages, I do see one
possible drawback.
  I have just been working with some fairly heavy-duty C++ code, and it
can be quite baffling to get a (sometimes misleading) compiler
diagnostic, which points at a line containing a really heavy compound
statement. It's by no means always obvious what the compiler is objecting to.


  A further point (this is really one of author discipline, rather than
language design) is trying to find deeply embedded data declarations.
Exactly what is "thingy" declared as? In Assembler (wash your mouth out
with soap :) ) at least those declarations were perforce neatly lined up
at the left margin. Now they may be buried levels deep in the code.




--
David R. Brooks <daveb@perth.DIALix.oz.au> Tel/fax. +61 9 434 4280
--

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