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From: jbn@wdl1.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Reading programs left-to-right.
Message-ID: <647@wdl1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Aug-85 20:22:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: wdl1.647
Posted: Thu Aug 22 20:22:11 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 13:13:21 EDT
Sender: notes@wdl1.UUCP
Organization: Ford Aerospace, Western Development Laboratories
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Nf-ID: #R:boring:-657100:wdl1:8600007:000:1026
Nf-From: wdl1!jbn    Aug 14 12:59:00 1985


      It's been done. NELIAC, an early Algol dialect with a singularly
simple compiler, used a right arrow as the assignment operator and placed
the source on the left and the destination on the right.  This was about
1960; the disappearance of the right arrow when character sets became
standardized seemed to kill off interest in NELIAC and assignments of this
type along with it.

      Regarding COBOL-60:  There are all these dummies running around touting
``natural language interfaces'' that are just keyword-driven parsers with
some noise words.  That's been done too.  Here's some COBOL-60:

 	Assignment:
		MOVE 100 TO X.

	Arithmetic:
		ADD 1 TO A.
		SUBTRACT 1 FROM A GIVING B.
		DIVIDE A BY B ON OVERFLOW STOP RUN.
		MULTIPLY CORRESPONDING TABLE-1 BY TABLE-2 GIVING TABLE-3;

	Subroutine call:
		PERFORM ZILCH.

	Code patching:
		ALTER ZILCH TO PROCEED THROUGH ALTERNATE-CODE-SECTION.

All this junk has been taken out of the language.  One now writes

	COMPUTE X=A+1.

just like everybody else.

					John Nagle