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<HR><H2>Re: assignment operator</H2>
<H3>daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tue Mar  7 16:33:06 1995
)</H3>
<PRE>
From: bellegj@monitor.cs.orst.edu
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 07 Mar 95 14:46:48 PST."
             &lt;m0rm69a-000KcEC@serial&gt; 
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 95 13:24:59 PST

&gt; I'd like to propose '-&gt;' be the assignment operator. It visually represents
&gt;  what happens to the variable being assigned the new value. It has no chance
&gt;  of being pronounced, 'equals'. It looks cool...
&gt; 
&gt; @program $root.init_root
&gt;  if (caller() != $root)
&gt;    throw(~perm, "Caller is not $root.");
&gt;  child_index -&gt; 0;
&gt;  owners -&gt; setadd([this()], sender());
&gt;  fertile -&gt; 0;

My biggest problem with this is that the -&gt; implies implies flow from 
information from left to right.  If I was to read
 foo -&gt; bar;
My first reaction would say that bar takes the value of foo instead of foo 
takes the value of bar.  

My own take on the assignment-as-expression issue is that while it would be 
nice I don't think it's woth complicating the language to get.




</PRE>
