Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!norvell
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: norvell@csri.toronto.edu (Theo Norvell)
Subject: Re: improve language by dropping ;
Message-ID: <1991Feb18.140346.8896@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
References: <8507.27b91f9e@jetson.uh.edu> <329@smds.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 91 19:03:46 GMT
Lines: 17

In article <329@smds.UUCP> rh@smds.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
>However the semicolon does let you put more
>than one statement per line or to use more than one line for a statement.

As was recently pointed out in this thread it is not hard to design a
language in which
	(a) The syntax is quite conventional except that it has no
	    statement separators and simple statements have no
	    terminators.  (I.e. no semicolons.)
	(b) The treatment of whitespace follows the algol tradition:
	    newline = blank, two blanks = one blank.
	(c) The syntax is presented with a plain context free (even LL(1))
	    grammar.
One can thus put several statements on the same line (sometimes with no
whitespace between them at all) or put one statement on several lines without
semicolons or anything similar.  See my previous article for a
example language.