Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Language Tenets (was Re: Double Width Integer Multiplication and Division
Message-ID: <1242@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 23:30:58 GMT
References: <57125@linus.UUCP> <1989Jun24.230056.27774@utzoo.uucp> <1207@quintus.UUCP> <1406@l.cc.purdue.edu> <2568@etive.ed.ac.uk> <605@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1219@quintus.UUCP> <713@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 17

In article <713@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>My point was _not_ that expressions that can't be nested are just as
>good as expressions that can be nested but rather that they are useful
>nonetheless.

My point was that if you allow some expressions to return multiple
values and not allow those to be nested, and still allow the other kind
that can be nested but can't return multiple values, you really confuse
the idea of an expression.  Especially if you can't immediately tell
which kind an expression is by looking at it.  Better to come up with a
semantics for handling a multiple-value expression inside another
expression, or as an argument to a function.  Or just forget multiple
values and pass a pointer to where to put the results.
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds