Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!watmsg!gjditchfield
From: gjditchfield@watmsg.waterloo.edu (Glen Ditchfield)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: PL/I and Reserved Words
Summary: There would have been too many
Keywords: PL/I keywords
Message-ID: <30496@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 19 Oct 89 14:13:35 GMT
References: <2958@usceast.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: gjditchfield@watmsg.waterloo.edu (Glen Ditchfield)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 13

In article <2958@usceast.UUCP> sharp@usceast.UUCP (Harry Sharp) writes:
>"Eventhough the capability to have variables like DECLARE and THEN, why would
> anyone ever use this?  Wouldn't it be hard even for the programmer to read?"

PL/I has a large number of keywords, many of which are used rarely, and
many of which have abbreviations.  If they had all been reserved words
instead of keywords, picking names for variables would have been more
difficult.  You couldn't have a string variable called "title", because
that's an option on the DOS version of the OPEN statement.

    Glen Ditchfield  gjditchfield@violet.uwaterloo.ca  Office: DC 2517
Dept. of Computer Science, U of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1
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