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From: fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Reading programs left-to-right.
Message-ID: <139@unc.unc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 13:44:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.139
Posted: Tue Aug 13 13:44:05 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 06:13:22 EDT
References: <6571@boring.UUCP> <6572@boring.UUCP>
Reply-To: fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann)
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 22

>> Why do most programming languages do assignments like
>> 	<destination> <assign-operator> <expression>
>[rather than]
>> 	<expression> <assign-operator> <destination>
>...
>> I remember seeing a language with the second type assigments once,
>> but it hasn't seemed to catch on.

In article <6572@boring.UUCP> steven@boring.UUCP (Steven Pemberton) writes:
>
>P.S. Actually I can think of a reason: if assignments were the other way
>round, you'd have your Lvalues on the right, and your Rvalues on the left;
>clearly undesirable :-).

This makes more sense than you think.  When debugging, you often need
to scan the program text to find the last place a variable's value was set.
You rarely if ever scan the listing for the last place the value was referenced.
That is, you're more likely to be searching for an Lvalue when quickly skimming
over the code.  These Lvalues are easier to pick out when set flush against
the margin.

	Frank Silbermann