Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!uwvax!rang From: rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal Subject: Re: Indenting Message-ID:Date: 2 Oct 89 22:21:27 GMT References: <21024@adm.BRL.MIL> Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu Organization: UW-Madison CS department Lines: 35 In-reply-to: R1TMARG%AKRONVM.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu's message of 2 Oct 89 19:07:12 GMT In article <21024@adm.BRL.MIL> R1TMARG%AKRONVM.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu (Tim Margush) writes: >What about the unnecessary semi-colons? I believe these indicate a basic >lack of understanding of the syntax requirements of the language. No, I don't think so. Personally, I usually avoid redundant semicolons, but there is a good reason to put them there: it means that lines within a block may be independently modified. If I have some code without the extra semicolon: begin i := 1; j := 2 end and want to add another statement, k := 3, I get: begin i := 1; j := 2 k := 3 (maybe with a semicolon) end and I need to change the previous line. This is counterintuitive; I don't think that using the extra semicolons or not really makes much of a difference one way or the other. (Of course, when you're making a change, you should always look at the surrounding lines anyway :-) It makes sense to use the semicolon as a statement terminator, especially if you consider an "IF" not to be terminated when the "ELSE" comes along. The distinction between terminator and separator isn't really critical, IMHO. +----------------------------------+------------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | | University of Wisconsin--Madison | | +----------------------------------+------------------+