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

[Arjen M. <arj...@wl...>]

Kevin Kenny wrote:

>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.
>  
>
Hm, I know too little about the history of language design, but I do 
know that
FORTRAN (pre-77) was rather limited in its choice of characters. This 
was in
the days of punch cards and tapes and wildly varying computer hardware.
My guess is that the colon made it into the language with the 77 standard.

(And I seem to remember that Algol did use := ...)

Regards,

Arjen