Re: [TCLCORE] TIP #292: Allow Unquoted Strings in Expressions

[Kevin K. <ke...@ac...>]

Donal K. Fellows wrote:
> I agree with and strongly support this suggestion. Many years of
> experience with C and Java (learning, using, and teaching) tells me that
> the "BCPL mistake"[*] is a horrible thing that always leads to trouble.

I think we have Fortran to blame for using a single '=' to denote
assignment.  (Yes, Fortran did use .EQ. to denote equality, so the
two could not be confused, but the single '=' gave other language
designers bad ideas.  Worst was Basic, where the meaning of '='
was context dependent:  LET A=B=C did not mean "set B and A both
to the value of C," but rather, "test if B is equal to C and set
A to the result of the test."

I still favour \u2190 for assignment (and \u21D0 could mean [lappend]),
but I know in my heart of hearts that the idea is quixotic at best.

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin