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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: "C" wish list.
Message-ID: <6107@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Nov-85 23:18:01 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6107
Posted: Fri Nov  1 23:18:01 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 23:18:01 EST
References: <335@graffiti.UUCP> <895@rlvd.UUCP>, <742@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 16
Keywords: language design C semicolons argh

> ... I prefer ;'s as statement terminators.  Trying to look at it
> objectively, I can see very little reason to prefer one or the other...

I can; the limited experiments that have been done on this strongly suggest
that semicolons as terminators are rather less error-prone.  I conjecture
that the basic reason is the two-dimensional structure of programs:  a
semicolon on the end of each "line" is a consistent rule, but leaving it out
on the last line is counter-intuitive.  Contrast this with the situation
in, say, argument lists, where separators work well because all the structure
is on one line and the commas are really perceived as being *between* the
individual items.  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.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry