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<HR><H2>Re: assignment operator</H2>
<H3>daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wed Mar  8 04:12:29 1995
)</H3>
<PRE>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 95 11:09:52 IST
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
From: bmgustav@bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il (Gustavo Glusman)

I wrote:
&gt;&gt; := is what is used in Pascal, and it is mistaken by = no less. People fail
&gt;&gt; to type the : too easily.
&gt;&gt; In other words, it might not solve the issue.
&gt;&gt; I think &lt;- is very good, and that its being 'far from normalness' can be an
&gt;&gt; asset, since the 'normal' methods cause confusion.

Jeff Kesselman answered:
&gt;Well, I'm going to be the dissenting voice here.  +=, -=, etc. all seemed
&gt;very rational to me.  The = being an assignment operator ONLY caused me
&gt;some trouble when i forst moved from Pascal to C, and it was minor
&gt;trouble at that.  You learn very quickly to be careful abotu this.  The
&gt;(IMO sad) fact of the matter is that fewer and fewer students are even
&gt;taught Pascal before C, so I REALLY think diverging away from C syntax
&gt;just because of some misguided notion that "we can do it better" is a BAD
&gt;idea.  Currently, the places ColdC differs from C for the most part make
&gt;logical functional sense. (Such as in the for construct, which is a true
&gt;set operator rather then a simple ordinal iterator.)
&gt;
&gt;The fact of the matter IMO is that divergence
&gt;away from C, even in an attempt to "make it clearer" will onyl make it
&gt;harder for people to learn the language.
&gt;
&gt;My 2 cents.


OK, let me clarify my statement/opinion:
I think that just '=' as assignment operator is ok. That the programmer
should learn to pay attention to the difference with '=='.
What I was saying is that, if the notion is to drop '=' because it may
cause confusion, then ':=' isn't any better. At that, '&lt;-' may be stronger.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Glusman               Founder/administrator of BioMOO
-- Gustavo@bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il
-- http://bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il:70/0h/Gustavo/Glusman
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</PRE>
