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From: trwarcadia!simpson@usc.edu (Scott Simpson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Eiffel Questions
Keywords: Eiffel Questions, Bug
Message-ID: <5400@wiley.UUCP>
Date: 7 Sep 89 16:08:57 GMT
Sender: news@wiley.UUCP
Reply-To: trwarcadia!simpson@usc.edu (Scott Simpson)
Organization: TRW Arcadia Project, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 35

I have some Eiffel questions.

1. Why is the semicolon a statement separator rather than a statement 
terminator?  From the Ada Rationale section 2.2

	Declarations and statements are always terminated by
	semicolons - this differs from the Pascal practice, in which a
	semicolon is used as a separator.  The Ada convention
	simplifies the insertion of another declaration or statement:
	normal layout places the semicolon at the end of a line and
	thus, where semicolons are separators, insertion of a line
	often entails changing the previous line as well.  This is an
	argument against separators between items that are likely to
	be on separate lines.  We want each line to be a complete unit
	- therefore including a terminator - so that adding a line
	does not require changing a previous line.  (Fortran achieves
	this by having the end of line be a terminator).

	The use of semicolons as terminators aids recovery by the
	compiler after finding a syntax error; recovery from omission
	of the semicolon itself is usually quite simple for the
	parser.  Finally, comparative analyses of programmer errors
	have shown the use of semicolon asa terminator to be less
	error-prone than its use as a separator [GH 75].

2. What's the status of adding concurrency to Eiffel?

3. Is there a InterViews-like UIMS done in Eiffel?

4. Are there Xlib, X toolkit, HP widgets, Sony widgets, etc. bindings
done in Eiffel?
	Scott Simpson
	TRW Space and Defense Sector
	usc!trwarcadia!simpson  	(UUCP)
	trwarcadia!simpson@usc.edu	(Internet)