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Path: utzoo!dciem!ntt
From: ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Lexical analyzers and parsers
Message-ID: <903@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-May-84 12:30:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.903
Posted: Thu May  3 12:30:38 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 3-May-84 14:03:55 EDT
References: <428@opus.UUCP>
Organization: NTT Systems Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 21

>>> Curiously [in FORTRAN], it was decided to ignore blanks,
>>> EVEN within identifiers.
>>
>>I don't find this at all curious, but in fact eminently reasonable.
>>Many, maybe most, identifiers in the real world contain spaces,
>>so why not include it in programming languages?
>>For instance my identifier (Steven Pemberton) contains a space.
>
>Come on!  You can figure out that your name is two identifiers!
>Doyoureallythinkthatspacesdon'tmakethatmuchdifference?
>Con side rit careful lying eneralbe fore jump ingt other espons etha
>tyoudon't.

Even if you don't admit that "Mark Brader" is one identifier (which is
how I, too, interpret it--"Mark" is a potentially ambiguous abbreviation),
what about a surname such as "de Broglie"?  But to get back to programming
languages, the point is that FORTRAN *ignores* the spaces, obliterating
any distinction between THE RAPIST and THERAPIST.  (On the other hand, on
formatted numeric input, it treats spaces as zeros...)

Mark Brader