From: utzoo!decvax!cca!gwyn@Brl@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re:  C extensions
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3956
Posted: Fri Oct 22 02:49:39 1982
Received: Sat Oct 23 01:10:55 1982

From:     Doug Gwyn <gwyn@Brl>
Date:     19 Oct 82 12:32:48-EDT (Tue)
There is no "else" statement ambiguity; the else is bound to the most
recent un-elsed "if".  To change this behavior would result in an
incompatible language which should most certainly not be called "C".

In Ada and Algol-68 (I think), there is no need for "begin...end" or
"{...}" compound statement delimiters, due to the structure of the
language.  E.g.,
	if condition then st1; st2 else st3; st4 fi
When properly indented,
	if condition then
		st1;
		st2
	else
		st3;
		st4
	fi
it is possible to change the number of statements in the body without
worrying about begin...end brackets.  However, in the Pascal-like form
I've used here, the trailing semicolons come and go when one changes
the number of statements.  This nuisance has been fixed in Ada, where
; is a statement terminator (as in C) rather than a delimiter.

This is not an advertisement for Ada, which I think is overblown.