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From: grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Precedent for use of =
Message-ID: <434@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Jun-86 14:35:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.434
Posted: Sat Jun 21 14:35:57 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Jun-86 03:31:11 EDT
References: <1331@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3544@ut-ngp.UUCP> <5166@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 20

In article <5166@ut-sally.UUCP> nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
>
>Early Algol used a left-pointing arrow as the assignment operator, but that
>was not included in the ASCII character set; that decision may be one of
>the costliest technical blunders of our time.
>
>Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin

The Burroughs B5500 algol compilers accepted back-arrow as an assignment
operator and it was beautiful!

Earlier versions of ASCII included the back-arrow and up-arrow as graphics,
but they were replaced by the underline (very useful) and circumflex (less).
I really didn't like this change, but then imagine trying to explain to a
naive user that the two up-arrow keys on his tube do different things!  Almost
as bad as IBM keyboards...
-- 
George Robbins - now working with,	uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)