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From: lkw@csun.UUCP (Larry Wake)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Multiple assignments
Message-ID: <220@csun.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 20:27:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: csun.220
Posted: Thu May 15 20:27:50 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 20-May-86 06:49:28 EDT
References: <501@brl-smoke.ARPA> <797@bentley.UUCP> <1455@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: lkw@csun.UUCP (Larry Wake)
Organization: California State University, Northridge
Lines: 27

Keywords:

In article <1455@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>This bothers me somewhat too.  I do have a suggestion for how to deal with
>it: have a "multi-assignment" operator.  Supposing that "$" is being used
>for this operator, then to set both "a" and "b" to zero, one would write
>"a $ b = 0", rather than "a = b = 0", as C does.

This bothers me somewhat (where have I heard this before?) -- your "$"
operator is actually instructing ANOTHER operator to have an attribute
it doesn't usually have (at least in your proposed implementation). 
In other words, in "b = 0", the "=" operation would NOT return a value,
but in "a $ b = 0", the "=" operation WOULD return a value, due only to
context, which I thought was what you were trying to avoid in the first
place.

The solution (if a solution is really necessary, and I don't think one
is) would be to change the place in your example where a special
operator is needed.  In this case, "$" would be a special type of
assignment operator: one that returned a value.  Your example would be
"a = b $ 0", indicating that the assignment of 0 to b should return a
value, which can then be assigned to a.  The plain old "=" would never
return a value, and whatever lint-like thingy you run over your
program will be perfectly happy.
-- 
Larry Wake                   uucp:   {ihnp4 | hplabs | psivax}!csun!lkw
CSUN Computer Center         BITNET: RETPLKW@CALSTATE
Northridge, CA 91330         ARPA:   RETPLKW%CALSTATE@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
"He's no fun, he fell right over."