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From: cjl@iuvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: How standard is COBOL ?
Message-ID: <11800019@iuvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Nov-84 13:53:00 EST
Article-I.D.: iuvax.11800019
Posted: Tue Nov 27 13:53:00 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Nov-84 05:23:22 EST
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Nf-From: iuvax!cjl    Nov 27 13:53:00 1984


>it, but Icon has the notion of "success" and "failure" of an expression.
>For instance, the statement
	>if x < 10 then a :=: b
>will exchange a and b iff the expression "x < 10" succeeds. This happens
>if x is less than 10, and the expression has the value 10. Hence,
>10 < x < 100 is either 100, or fails.

  The relational operators in ICON return numbers, not boolean values.
Actually there are no explicit boolean values in ICON but faillure, and success.
Therefore 3 < 8 > 1 or (3 < 8) > 1 are evaluated successfully, but
   3 < (8 > 1) return failure !!!!
The reason is 8 > 1 returns 1 not 8.

I cannot agree ICON's approach is easy to understand because this kind of 
language semantics is not natural and used in nowhere but some programming
languages where there is no explicit boolean values.

C.J.Lo
ARPA : cjl@Indiana@CSNet-Relay
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