[714] in Coldmud discussion meeting

Re: consider the lilies

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wed Mar 15 18:48:26 1995 )

From: Alex Stewart <riche@crl.com>
To: paul@solar.sky.net
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 15:46:10 -0800 (PST)
Cc: crag@serial.io.com, coldstuff@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9503150046.AA00237@MIT.EDU> from "paul@solar.sky.net" at Mar 14, 95 06:45:20 pm

> I don't see any reason to change from '='. There may be confusion with
> '=='. By the same token, there may be confusion between '<-' and '-' or '<'.

The issue here isn't confusion, but mistakes.  Taking into account this
distinction, however, Paul has brought up something that I think we've been
overlooking, too..  The whole point of changing the assignment operator is to
avoid simple, common mistakes turning one operator into another, with effects
that might not be immediately obvious but could be disastrous..  Given this
goal, it becomes apparent that <- and -> both have similar problems, in that
each of their constituent characters are also operators which are usable in the
same (or at least some of the same) context.

Thus, I change my vote on these to feeling that they're only marginally (if at
all) better than leaving it the way it is, on mistake-proofing grounds, and
are worse on consistency and ease-of-learning grounds.. thus I'm against both
of them.

I still think that := is the best choice, as it suffers none of these drawbacks
and is already a rather well known (and easily figurable-outable for those who
don't already know it) assignment operator elsewhere..

-R
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