Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!think!mit-eddie!barmar
From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Reading programs left-to-right.
Message-ID: <4951@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 00:51:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4951
Posted: Tue Aug 13 00:51:05 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 00:22:07 EDT
References: <6571@boring.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 16

In article <6571@boring.UUCP> jack@mcvax.UUCP (Jack Jansen) writes:
>Why do most programming languages do assignments like
>	<destination> <assign-operator> <expression>

I think that it is mostly due to the legacy of Fortran, Algol, PL/I,
etc.  As to why these languages do it this way, I suspect that it has to
do with mathematical notation.  Mathematicians often name quantities
with statements of the form
	Let <var> = <expression>
or
	Let <var> be <description>
(e.g. "Let R be the set of real numbers").
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar