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From: Dmitry A.Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: status of Ada STL?
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 23:40:55 +0200
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Date: 2002-06-18T23:40:55+02:00
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Frank J. Lhota wrote:

>> But then there is no necessity in having two different symbols for
> equality
>> and assignment. Make both "="!
> 
> If memory serves correctly, that was the PL/1 approach: within a context
> where a Boolean expression is expected, "=" tests for equality; outside of
> such contexts, "=" was assignment. At the time, PL/1's syntax was
> criticized for being confusing for the reader, if not the compiler. We may
> wish to exercise caution before adopting context-sensitive interpretation
> of operators.

PL/1 was a wonder. You never knew the outcome of any expression you wrote. 
Wasn't something like that the goal of the original poster? (:-)).  So I 
expected that he would immediately embrace my "improvement", and then we 
could go further and replace most of symbols with "="! I thought about ".", 
"=>" etc. So that a valid program would appear sort of white noise to an 
innocent reader. (:-)) I remember in the times of punched cards people used 
all card columns when programmed in PL/1 (it has a free syntax like Ada) to 
reduce the number of cards (one payed per card). The result was like an 
output of UUENCODE. What a fun was to read such programs! 

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de