Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watrose.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watrose!jsgray
From: jsgray@watrose.UUCP (Jan Gray)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: indentation for statement grouping, and will the real B please stand up!
Message-ID: <7574@watrose.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 09:53:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: watrose.7574
Posted: Mon Sep 30 09:53:40 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 00:22:34 EDT
References: <262@pedsgd.UUCP> <1502@umcp-cs.UUCP> <205@graffiti.UUCP> <6630@boring.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsgray@watrose.UUCP (Jan Gray)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 26
Keywords: foo
Summary: 

In article <6630@boring.UUCP> guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) writes:
>In article <205@graffiti.UUCP> peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>Then you could indicate compound and continued statements by indentation:
>> [long example]
>>Any programming languages actually do this, by the way?
>
>Yes.  B, for instance(*).  A small example of a B program to give you the
>taste of it:
.
.
.
>(*) No relation with the predecessor of C.
>
>Disclaimer: I work on the design and implementation of B and thus am not
>unbiased.  On the other hand, we don't earn a cent by selling it (yet).

B, "the predecessor of C" still exists and is used here at the University
of Waterloo for systems programming on a Honeywell DPS8, and, I expect,
on all Honeywells running GCOS.


Years ago I wrote a preprocessor for B which grouped statements by indentation,
by inserting '{'s and '}'s when indentation changed levels.  The only problem
with this simple technique was you had to be very careful folding lines of code.

Jan Gray   (jsgray@watrose)   University of Waterloo   (519)-885-1211 x3870