Re: Ada (was Rival JSF teams fly final STOVL flights with flair, highlight strengths)

[sbdpumbaa@aol.com (bendel boy)]

"John Keeney" <jdkeeney@iglou.com> wrote in message news:<3b716b22_1@news.iglou.com>...
> Matthew V. Jessick <mjessick@gte.net> wrote in message
> news:3B6F73F9.15E98173@gte.net...
> > The    if (A=B) {    mistake   where B is copied into A and if non-zero
> > the if condition is true.
> 
> Actually, I've writen this code more than a few times, and meant it.
> Generally more in context of loops though.

But why would you want to mean this?

For my money, I would prefer the Algol approach:

if (0 = A := B) then

which would be interpreted as

(i) assign B to A -- assignment clause
(ii) test if A is zero -- logical clause

The C code makes use of a confusing short-cut, allowing confusion
between assignment, numbers, and booleans. Great for the experienced
programmer - fatal for the follow-on maintenance.