Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry 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