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From: thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: := versus == (Re: He's not the only one at it again!)
Message-ID: <1990Jul31.162535.14673@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 31 Jul 90 16:25:35 GMT
References: <25630@cs.yale.edu> <58091@lanl.gov> <3478@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <25681@cs.yale.edu> <1990Jul30.143530.24295@phri.nyu.edu> <25684@cs.yale.edu> <=L-4T-A@ggpc2.ferranti.com>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
Lines: 22

In article <=L-4T-A@ggpc2.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>I think the best solution to this is to use ":=" for assignment and "==" for
>equality. That way there would be no problem with using the wrong one in the
>wrong context by accident.
>
Not necessary, of course; no *real* programmer would mistype something that
important.  :-)  :-)  :-)   ("What I smiley three times is false!" - not
quite Lewis Carroll.)

My big complaint with :=, though, is that I've never found a keyboard with
both ':' and '=' either both shifted or both unshifted, although I've seen
them in both other possible configurations.  There are workarounds, such as
key mapping or using '#' or something and doing a global replace, but they
aren't as portable or convenient as I'd like.  (Beats "=" and ".EQ.",
though :-)

>-- 
>Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
>+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
><peter@ficc.ferranti.com>

David Thornley