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From: jww@bonnie.UUCP (Joel West)
Newsgroups: net.lang.mod2
Subject: Re: Aren't people fed up with semicolons yet?
Message-ID: <469@bonnie.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Apr-85 15:05:32 EST
Article-I.D.: bonnie.469
Posted: Sat Apr 20 15:05:32 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Apr-85 05:37:31 EST
References: <4003@mit-eddie.UUCP> <32@harvard.ARPA>
Organization: CACI -- La Jolla, Calif.
Lines: 32

There is no conceivable reason why semicolons arenecessary
to implement any higher-level language.

HOWEVER....
	If you don't have semicolons, you get a very slow parser
	that does lots of backups to figure out what really
	comprises a statement

	You get very cryptic and meaningless error messages with
	many syntax errors;

	There are potential ambiguities in the syntax, particularly
	in conjunction with other "optional" features.

	In short, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL).

I have the joy of maintaining a compiler for a language where semicolons
are not used at all, and statement boundaries are completely ignored
(except an EOL is disallowed in a literal).  The lack of an explicit
boundary meant in one real case that the statements
	CLOSE xyz
	PRINT ...
was ambiguousy, since "PRINT" was a valid "CLOSE" option.  Making a
comma operator mandatory removed this, since "CLOSE xyz, PRINT" is
different from "CLOSE xyz [;] PRINT"
-- 
	Joel West				     (619) 457-9681
	CACI, Inc. - Federal 3344 N. Torrey Pines Ct La Jolla 92037
	jww@bonnie.UUCP (ihnp4!bonnie!jww)
	westjw@nosc.ARPA

   "The best is the enemy of the good" - A. Mullarney