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From: caag@rlvd.UUCP (Crispin Goswell)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: "C" wish list.
Message-ID: <914@rlvd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 10:16:03 EST
Article-I.D.: rlvd.914
Posted: Thu Nov  7 10:16:03 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Nov-85 05:42:31 EST
References: <335@graffiti.UUCP> <895@rlvd.UUCP> <742@mmintl.UUCP> <6107@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: caag@rlvd.UUCP (Crispin Goswell)
Organization: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Atlas Buildings, U.K.
Lines: 25
Keywords: language design C semicolons argh
Xpath: warwick ubu

In article <6107@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> ... I prefer ;'s as statement terminators.  Trying to look at it
>> objectively, I can see very little reason to prefer one or the other...
>
>		... Languages like Pascal and C are specified in terms of
>one-dimensional token streams, but that is *not* the form in which human
>beings deal with them.

Oh? How about:
	bar fred (a, b) foo a; baz b; { return wop (b, a); }
				    |			 |
			          Yick!	     Ick!	Ugh!
Pascal:					       |
	procedure fred (a : foo; b : baz) : bar; begin return wop (b, a) end

messy aren't they? in ALOGOL68, you get:

	PROC fred = (FOO a, BAZ b) bar: wop (b, a)

My functions would benefit from being laid out one-dimensionally (I often have
lots of small functions). I lay them out two dimensionally in C because they
look so bad if I don't. It is unwise to try to out-guess users...

	Crispin Goswell
P.S. I still claim to be a human being :-)