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From: peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Operator Precedence
Message-ID: <205@graffiti.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 06:49:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: graffiti.205
Posted: Tue Sep 17 06:49:18 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 06:06:23 EDT
References: <262@pedsgd.UUCP> <1502@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: The Power Elite, Houston, TX
Lines: 27

> Another interesting(?) idea would be to base operator binding on
> spacing:  expressions that "look" like they are done first, are
> done first.  (This isn't my idea, by the way.)  That is,
> 
> 	a <- b+c * 4
> 
> would be equivalent to
> 
> 	a <- (b + c) * 4
> 
> (Personally I think this is worse than no precedence).

I'd hate to program in that, but that's certainly an interesting idea. Then
you could indicate compound and continued statements by indentation:

	if a < b
	  blah
	  blah
	else
	  while not finished
	    do this,
	      and that
	      and the other thing
	    remember to reinit the loop!
	and in any case...

Any programming languages actually do this, by the way?


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