Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!bbn!cosell.bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@cosell.bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: History of := (was: == vs =)
Message-ID: <20123@bbn.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 88 16:14:29 GMT
References: <2337@haddock.ISC.COM> <51300003@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@bbn.com.UUCP (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: BBN Laboratories Incorporated, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 13


Well, the first time _I_ saw := was in Algol.  It is all real hazy now,
but as I recall, Algol had _three_ variants of '=':
   =    boolean -- tested if a equalled b 
   :=   assignment -- evaluated b and assigned that value to a.
   ::=  definition -- a was defined to be 'b' as a macro.

(in C parlance, they would be, roughly, = -> ==; := => =;
::= -> #define)
   __
  /  )                              Bernie Cosell
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