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From: gasser@masg1.epfl.ch (Laurent Gasser)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: "Subtract C, add Ada"
Date: 13 Jan 1995 12:38:58 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
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 <3f4mbe$rud@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu>
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Date: 1995-01-13T12:38:58+00:00
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In article <3f4mbe$rud@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu>, dobrien@seas.gwu.edu (David O'Brien) writes:
|> R.A.L Williams (bill@valiant) wrote:
|> : My experience of writing software and running software projects in C
|> : highlights four common low-level C errors:
|> :   1. = instead of == and vice versa
|> 
|> I have to wonder.  What if C defined the logical equals operator to be
|> "=" and the assignment operator to be ":=" just like Ada, Algol, Pascal,
|> Modula-x, etc?  Would this error still exist???

The problem is in the language definition, not in the choic of symbols.
C is one of the rare language I use to allow having an assignment after 
the if statement.  All other languages only allow for a boolean test.

I never saw a good reason for allowing this.

-- 
Laurent Gasser (gasser@dma.epfl.ch)
Computers do not solve problems, they execute solutions.

I know very few ideas worth dying for, none is worth killing.