Re: Dereferencing and style guides

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

Adam Beneschan <adambeneschan@aol.com> writes:

> I can imagine that Ada might have adopted the same syntax, if only
> those old keypunch machines had a ^ character on them.

I thought they did.  Except it looked like an up-arrow.

Anyway, the solution to keyboards with missing characters
is clear: see J.2.  7-bit ASCII was standard at the time.

> On the other hand, I'm not sure about the idea that "making things
> just one character" equates to readability.  If that were true, APL
> would be the most readable language around.  And C would be second.

Well, I didn't say everything should be one character.  I said
the dereference operator should be one character.  So I'd say
APL is a bit of a straw man here.  I'm quite happy to say
"end if;" where C says "}".

In Ada, dereference is usually zero characters, so I'm actually arguing
for MORE verbosity!  Just a little more.

- Bob