Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!nick From: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Language Tenets (was Re: Double Width Integer Multiplication and Division Message-ID: <2568@etive.ed.ac.uk> Date: 14 Jul 89 11:08:35 GMT References: <57125@linus.UUCP> <1989Jun24.230056.27774@utzoo.uucp> <1207@quintus.UUCP> <1406@l.cc.purdue.edu> Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Organization: LFCS Enya Admiration Society Lines: 34 In-reply-to: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) In article <1406@l.cc.purdue.edu>, cik@l.cc (Herman Rubin) writes: >In article <1207@quintus.UUCP>, pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes: >> There's a big problem with this: you have an expression that's no good >> for anything but putting on the right side of an assignment. What good >> are expressions if you can't nest them? > >That YOU cannot see a use for them is irrelevant at best. Enough people >have posted that they can see a use for this aspect of computer language >to include it. I will not object to your including something in the >language which I might not think even appropriate. I see the point of multiple returns, but agree with Peter than having them allowed only in a restricted context is a big problem. >There are times for elegance and times not to have elegance. I will not >use an elegant definition if it obscures the concept. I will not use a >short elegant proof, in general, if the understanding of the theorem is >compromised. Doesn't elegance imply clarity and understanding? How can something obscure and unfathomable be elegant? I don't believe that multiple returns are at all difficult. You need garbage collection since you're passing stuctures out of scope, that's all. >Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 Nick. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ Fais que ton reve soit plus long que la nuit.