Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!quintus!dave From: dave@quintus.UUCP (David Bowen) Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog Subject: Re: block and exit_block Message-ID: <1536@quintus.UUCP> Date: 7 Jun 91 18:32:49 GMT References: Reply-To: dave@quintus.UUCP (David Bowen) Distribution: comp Organization: Quintus Corporation Lines: 24 In article ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) writes: > Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 08:13:31 +0200 > From: Michael Dahmen > > > why in the world do they use the names block/3 and exit_block/1? > > why not the much more customary catch and throw? > > Maybe because they don't known or don't like LISP ... :-) > >isn't this a wonderful motivation for making a proposal for an iso >standard? gives me shivers of awe thinking about the deliberations of >that august standards body working on my behalf and on the behalf of >all the other little people in the world of prolog users. I don't know where the names came from. However, the U.S. committee (X3J17) recommended changing them to catch and throw and this was agreed upon at the last meeting of the ISO committee (WG17) last November. The committees working on Prolog standardization are not particularly august. They are mostly made up of people who have full-time jobs doing other things, and thus it takes a while for even obviously bad ideas, like the names block and exit_block, to be cleared up. (How those names got in the draft in the first place I do not know.)