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From: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>
Subject: Re: Software landmines (was: Why C++ is successful)
Date: 1998/08/25
Message-ID: <m3g1elrvgb.fsf@fred.muc.de>#1/1
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Organization: [posted via] Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-08-25T00:00:00+00:00
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Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> 
>  Don't take away my assignment statements, Robert.  The help me write
>  crisp, short code sentences that ordinary mortals can understand. In
>  fact, as an old time Fortranner, I sometimes write a function that
>  looks like,
> 
>        function F ( ... ) return some-data-type is
>          Result : some-data-type := initial-value;
>        begin
>          Result := algorithmic-part;
>          return Result;
>        end F;

I think you misunderstand. Even purely functional languages like ML have
a way to write this so that you don't have to put the complete program
into one expression. What they don't have, and I think that is what Robert
was refering to, is a way to cause side effects and change the program state
by an assignment.

-Andi