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From: lavinus@csgrad.cs.vt.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: improve language by dropping ;
Message-ID: <943@creatures.cs.vt.edu>
Date: 19 Feb 91 00:03:51 GMT
References: <8507.27b91f9e@jetson.uh.edu> <329@smds.UUCP> <1991Feb18.140346.8896@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
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Reply-To: lavinus@csgrad.cs.vt.edu ()
Organization: Virginia Tech Computer Science, Blacksburg, VA
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There's a reason for the semicolon that seems to be missed here.  Yes, as
several of you have pointed out, it is perfectly feasible to define a language
which requires *no* end-of-statement separators - no semicolons, end-of-line's,
or anything.  One can even drop the semicolons from Pascal pretty easily. 
But.. this assumes that a compiler for this language is always given correct
programs.  The semicolons are there so that if the compiler hits an error, and
gets really confused, it may easily find the end of the statement and recover
to continue parsing the program.

-- Joe Lavinus, Virginia Tech

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= Joseph W. Lavinus                           =     \  /      =
= Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia         =      \/__V    =
= email: lavinus@csgrad.cs.vt.edu             =      /\       =