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From: haahr@macbeth.UUCP (Paul Haahr)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Reading programs left-to-right.
Message-ID: <131@macbeth.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 19:21:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: macbeth.131
Posted: Mon Aug 12 19:21:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Aug-85 05:54:14 EDT
References: <6571@boring.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 31

In article <6571@boring.UUCP> Jack Jansen (mcvax!jack) writes:
> Why do most programming languages do assignments like
> 	<destination> <assign-operator> <expression>
> This has two major disadvantages over
> 	<expression> <assign-operator> <destination>
> in my opinion.
> ...
> I remember seeing a language with the second type assigments once,
> but it hasn't seemed to catch on.

I can think of one in which a similar syntax has caught on.  Consider:
	echo 3 > a					(a = 3)
	echo 5 > b					(b = 5)
	cat a | add b > c				(c = 8)
	cat a | sub b | tee d | add `echo 4` > e	(e = (d = a - b) + 4)

where add and sub are filters that numerically add (substract) the values
from the file presented as an argument to the standard input values.
Arithmetic is not the typical use of of the shell, but the pipe notation
is flexible enough (because all it really is is another notation for
calling functions, as is operator infix notation).  I like shell/pipe
syntax better (as a rule of thumb) than operator notation, and agree
that left to right could be more intuitive than right to left.  However,
it will take more than slight notational convenience to change the world.

my suggestion:  write a good, general purpose programming language that
uses this notation.  use it for a while.  if you and other people like
it, great.  if not, all you've done is invented another dvorak keyboard.
-- 
				Paul Haahr
				..!princeton!macbeth!haahr