Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!hacgate!ashtate!markg
From: markg@ashtate (Mark Grand)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: :=
Summary: Why left arrow wasn't rendered as <-
Message-ID: <756@ashton.UUCP>
Date: 5 Oct 89 16:39:36 GMT
References: <1989Oct3.182931.518@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <6054@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Organization: Ashton-Tate, Torrance, CA
Lines: 9

In article <6054@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:
> I used an HP Algol on an early HP minicomputer (2114?) and used the left
> I personally would like to see the left arrow back. It makes more sense
> than colon equal (gag, why couldn't they at least have used <- ?) and both
> of these are easier to explain than the use of just the equals sign for
> assignment.

Back then (late sixties) keypunches were the most common way of getting a
program into machine readable form.  Not all keypunches had '<'.