Re: Dereferencing and style guides

[Adam Beneschan <adambeneschan@aol.com>]

On Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:35:31 AM UTC-7, Stefan...@uni-weimar.de wrote:

> > I like the syntax of Pascal: If X is a pointer, then "X" denotes that
> > pointer, "X^" denotes the object it points at (all of it!), and "X^.Y"
> > denotes the Y component of the object X points at (again, all of that
> > component!).  And "X.Y" is illegal.
> 
> > Since dereference is just one character, it's not painful to read.
> > And it imparts useful information.
> 
> Agreed! This is one of the few points where Ada really made things from 
> Pascal worse.

I can imagine that Ada might have adopted the same syntax, if only those old keypunch machines had a ^ character on them.

On the other hand, I'm not sure about the idea that "making things just one character" equates to readability.  If that were true, APL would be the most readable language around.  And C would be second.

                             -- Adam