Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rlvd.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!mcvax!ukc!warwick!rlvd!caag 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 :-)