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From: radzy@calma.uucp (Tim Radzykewycz)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Indented flow languages
Message-ID: <23@calma.uucp>
Date: Sun, 22-Sep-85 23:24:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: calma.23
Posted: Sun Sep 22 23:24:49 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 11:52:57 EDT
Reply-To: radzy@calma.UUCP (Tim Radzykewycz)
Organization: GE/Calma Co., R&D Systems Engineering, Milpitas, CA
Lines: 27

>Subject: Re: Operator Precedence
>> Another interesting(?) idea would be to base operator binding on
>> spacing: ...
>>					    ...	  That is,
>> 	a <- b+c * 4
>> would be equivalent to
>> 	a <- (b + c) * 4
>> (Personally I think this is worse than no precedence).
>I'd hate to program in that, but that's certainly an interesting idea. Then
>you could indicate compound and continued statements by indentation:
...example elided
>Any programming languages actually do this, by the way?

First, I've heard of a language which does statement grouping by
indention.  It was developed in U.K., and got as far as the "Exotic
Language of the Month Club" of the November 1984 issue of _Computer_
_Language_.  It's main claim is concurrency, but it does use indention
instead of 'begin..end' or '{..}'.

Personally, although both these ideas are "interesting", I think
they both stink as an *ENFORCED* feature of the language.  Stylistic
goals are great, but making them a part of the language is going
a little far.
-- 
Tim (radzy) Radzykewycz
	calma!radzy@ucbvax.ARPA
	ucbvax!calma!radzy