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From: raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Zip chip, compilers, and other stories
Message-ID: <1989Dec1.173229.20492@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 1 Dec 89 17:32:29 GMT
References: <1989Dec1.074322.5254@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
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Reply-To: raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen)
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In-reply-to: cbdougla@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Collin Broadrick Douglas)

In article <703@studsys.mu.edu> buchho@studsys.UUCP (buchho) asks:
>  Isn't there a [Applesoft] compiler out there that'll support the
>ampersand?  

Supporting the ampersand is not as easy as you think.  If you ever
passed any arguments to the &, this means that the machine language
subroutine which handled the & vector had to be able to get at the
source code of your program so it could parse what came next (variable
names, etc.).  When you compile a program, the source code isn't there
any more.
--
Raymond Chen  raymond@math.berkeley.edu | In general, it's very hard to
    mathematician by training,          | protect oneself against omnipotent
	hacker by choice                | beings. -- Barry Margolin