Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hao!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!pur-ee!pur-phy!cca
From: cca@pur-phy (Charles C. Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: HyperCard bug  <- No, it's a feature.
Message-ID: <1007@pur-phy>
Date: 1 Mar 88 16:04:58 GMT
References: <1149@cpocd2.UUCP> <7500@apple.Apple.Com>
Organization: Purdue Univ. Phys Dept, W.Lafayette, IN
Lines: 32
Summary: No, it is a MISfeature

In article <7500@apple.Apple.Com>, winkler@Apple.COM (Dan Winkler) writes:

> So, in a never ending battle to figure out what the heck you meant,
> the HyperTalk interpreter guesses that you might forgotten a pair of
> quotes, and transforms the line into...

How helpful.  Any interpreter/compiler which silently changes the
meaning of the source provided to it is going to frustrate many, many
programmers.  Me included (I've been bitten by this "feature" before).

> I call the above construction an "unquoted literal".  It let's you
> do things like...
> [stuff deleted]
> Here are a couple rules of thumb:...

Sigh.  Whatever happened to simplicity as a goal for programming
languages?  Just REQUIRE the silly "'s, get rid of unquoted literals,
and all this would become moot.  I simply can't believe that simpler
is not better in this case.

On a related note, I would like to see required declarations for all
variables (global variables have to be declared, I just want to extend
that to local variables as well).  The script could be checked for
consistency when OK is clicked.  The next step would be an incremental
compiler....

While I'm dreaming, I'd also like to see variables which have a scope
for the script they're declared in (card variables in the card script,
button variables in the button script, etc.).

Charlie Allen		cca@newton.physics.purdue.edu
			cca@fnal.bitnet
			..pur-ee!newton!cca