<HEAD><TITLE>discuss@charon: [680] in "Coldmud discussion meeting"</TITLE>
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<HR><H2>Re: assignment operator</H2>
<H3>daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thu Mar  9 14:34:19 1995
)</H3>
<PRE>
From: brandon@avon.declab.usu.edu
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 95 12:26:17 -0700

&lt; Personally, I'd prefer :=..  It's already used in at least one language for
&lt; this purpose

VMS's DCL (Digital Command Language, aka VMS shell) uses ':==' to set symbols
(i.e. make an assignment, of sorts).

&lt; I don't particularly like &lt;- mainly because it doesn't have an = in it (as I
&lt; mentioned above), and because it doesn't much look like an expression either
&lt; (it looks like a statement.. tho I suppose any assignment will conceptually
&lt; seem more like a statement, even if it isn't, but at least '='-based things
&lt; have a history of expressionism(?) to back them up..)

Well, I'm torn here.  I actually like how '&lt;-' looks, it grows on you
aesthetically, but it DOES get to be somewhat confusing with '-&gt;'...
(especially if I use '-&gt;' to access global methods).

From all of the arguments put forward, I think we could say it is a tossup
between '&lt;-' and ':='.  The pros/cons I can think of are (feel free to add/
change this list):

Assignment operator as '&lt;-':
PROS:
  * Looks correct (i.e. right is assigned/pointed into left)
  * some think it looks "cool" or is aesthetically pleasing
CONS:
  * Looks too much like '-&gt;' in C, which has a totally different meaning.
  * Looks too much like '-&gt;', which may be used to point to global methods
    (versus '.' which would be used to point to local methods)

Assignment operator as ':=':
PROS:
  * It has been used before in a few languages (including Pascal and DCL)
  * It includes an equals sign, but is a two character sequence per all
    other operators including an equals sign.
CONS:
  ?

&lt; Mind you, I'm not particularly sad to see it go, tho there
&lt; are some others who shall remain nameless which I'd rather see bite it..
                  ^^^

Ack, you can tell when you have been programming too long when you start
referring to programming languages as entities/people rather than objects 8)

-Brandon
</PRE>
