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From: art@cs.bu.edu (Al Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: He's not the only one at it again!
Message-ID: <61599@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 90 15:57:32 GMT
References: <25630@cs.yale.edu> <58091@lanl.gov> <3478@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <25681@cs.yale.edu>
Sender: news@bu.edu.bu.edu
Reply-To: art@cs.UUCP (Al Thompson)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
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In article <25681@cs.yale.edu> zenith-steven@cs.yale.edu (Steven Ericsson Zenith) writes:
|In article <3478@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
|>In article <58091@lanl.gov>, jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
|>
|>> 2) Features which are different, but completely irrelevant (like using
|>>    ":=" instead of "=" for assignment).
|>
|>It isn't clear what := is supposed to be irrelevant to.
|
|a := b	means "assign the value of b to a".
|a = b	means "a is equal to b".
|
|The use of := distinguishes assignment from equality, thus prevents
|overloading a single operator and IMHO is a much nicer solution to the
|C hack == used to ovecome the same problem.

Exactly.  Originally the assignment operator was a back arrow.  Then, some
genius decided to do away with a back arrow key and := became the
operator.  I always liked (and still do) the back arrow better because it
is suggestive of what you are doing, moving a copy of a value to the to
the assigned variable e.g. a <- b.