<HEAD><TITLE>discuss@charon: [450] in "Coldmud discussion meeting"</TITLE>
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<HR><H2>Re: assignment, while (etc) (fwd)</H2>
<H3>daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sat Sep 24 15:33:26 1994
)</H3>
<PRE>
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 14:00:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: colinm@ozemail.com.au (Colin McCormack)
Reply-To: colinm@ozemail.com.au

&gt; &lt; Original quote by Colin McCormack:
&gt; &lt;&gt; It strikes me that one of C--'s features is its similarity to C++.
&gt; &lt;
&gt; &lt;&gt; Hence, assignment `=' (should be an expression)
&gt; &lt;&gt;        equality `==' (if you can't tell the difference, learn to program)
&gt; &lt;&gt;        while (abomination) { abomination } (abomination) - syntax sucks rocks.
&gt; &lt;
&gt; &lt; If nothing else, I share the same attitude.  It doesn't quite make sense
&gt; &lt; to take a language called C-- and make it like pascal, or worse, add a
&gt; &lt; weird conditional structure.  If anything, C-- should mimic C and C++.

[...]

&gt; [...] changing the
&gt; assignment operator from '=' to ':=' in order to cause less confusion (NOT to
&gt; make it closer to pascal--that is the silliest idea I've ever seen Colin come
&gt; up with)

Well, see, I didn't come up with that idea... Brandon misread &lt;&gt; as &gt;
and misattributed it to me.  That's similar to mistaking = for ==.

I just can't bring myself to see the confusion as a inherent in 
the character `&gt;' and I don't see how making it ':&gt;' would avoid any confusion.

People writing programs just have to be careful.

Colin.

</PRE>
