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From: bdb@cl.cam.ac.uk (Brian Brunswick)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: Multiple value assignment in icon???
Message-ID: <1991Mar13.180536.22613@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Mar 91 18:05:36 GMT
Reply-To: bdb@cl.cam.ac.uk (Brian Brunswick)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK
Lines: 25

I am fairly new to icon, but am considering thr pros and cons of
writing a medium size project using it.  I came up with a language feature
that I have found useful in the past, namely returning a fixed small
number of distinct values from a procedure and assigning them to separate
variables, and wondered what the particular idiom might be.

That was where the trouble began.

Something like every (x|y):=f() is no good, of course.

I fiddled about, and eventually came up with using this:

    every z:=:y:=:x:=:r123()

where r123 would do

    suspend ![1|2|3]

and ends up with x=1, y=2, z=3

Note the reversed order of xyz.

Now this is a horrible cludge, it seems to me. Am I missing something,
or does this irritation spoil an otherwise pretty language?
Brian.Brunswick@uk.ac.cam.cl  Disclaimer.  Short sig rules!