Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!tom@nw.stl.stc.co.uk
From: tom@nw.stl.stc.co.uk (Tom Thomson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: comparison: was He's not the only one at it again!
Message-ID: <3261@stl.stc.co.uk>
Date: 31 Jul 90 14:29:48 GMT
References: <25630@cs.yale.edu> <58091@lanl.gov> <3478@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <25681@cs.yale.edu>
Sender: news@stl.stc.co.uk
Reply-To: "Tom Thomson" <tom@stl.stc.co.uk>
Organization: ICL
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In article <25681@cs.yale.edu> zenith-steven@cs.yale.edu (Steven Ericsson Zenith) writes:
>
>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.

I'm not sure what Steven is claiming here.
 
Is he claiming that ":=" vs "=" is a greater visual distinction than "=" vs
".EQ."?
  
Is he claiming that the Algol distinction is easier to parse than the Fortran 
one?
 
After all, the discussion was about what Algol brought that was new.  The
distinction between assignment and comparison certainly wasn't new, the only
new thing here is the particular concrete syntax:  so what's so great about
this particular concrete syntax?
 
Or is Steven, like most of those who claim that Algol brought new concepts
into the computer language area, just totally ignorant of what went before?
 
Tom Thomson   [tom@nw.stl.stc.co.uk