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From: igouy@yahoo.com (Isaac Gouy)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: += in ada
Date: 3 Oct 2003 09:22:19 -0700
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"Frank J. Lhota" <NOSPAM.lhota.adarose@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<cVzeb.10092$kD3.2315@nwrdny03.gnilink.net>...
> "Peter Amey" <peter.amey@praxis-cs.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:ble3d6$aus9m$1@ID-69815.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > Surely, if you have minimalist sensibilties you would replace:
> >
> > "count = count + 1"   with   "False"?
> 
> I know that using "=" for assignment goes all the way back to Fortran and
> Basic, but it has always been a source of confusion. That's why I would
> prefer ":=" for assignment, and "+:=" for the increment operator.

A variation on that theme is used in CLAIRE
   := for assignment
   :+ for increment


> The best symbol for assignment that I have seen is a left arrow, e.g. "count
> ? count + 1". Visually, it is quite suggestive of assigment (the value on
> the right goes into the variable on the left) and it would never be confused
> with testing for equality. Both APL and early versions of Smalltalk used the
> left arrow for assignment. As far as I can tell, the only reason why the
> left arrow is not used more often is that it is not a standard 7-bit ASCII
> character.