Re: Where did /= come from?

["Matthew Baulch" <matt@greenroom.com.au>]

On Wed, 06 Nov 2002 10:12:59 +0000, Programmer Dude wrote:

> I'm learning Ada (installed GNAT and AdaGIDE last week, wrote Hello, World).
> 
> I was somewhat bemused to stumble on Ada's version of "not equals": /=
> 
> I'm curious about its derivation or the reason behind the lexography.
> (Perhaps a desire to use common keyboard characters?)

I'm not advocating C when I say this, but != makes far more sense than /=
lexically speaking. In C, the Negative of a bool is retrieved with !foo.
In Ada, not foo. So I believe that K&R got it right using the != operator
for 'not equal'. Ada on the other hand doesn't use the ! operator and "not
equal" is too clumsy so it could be far worse than '/='.