Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!gatech!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Draco keywords
Message-ID: <25958@bbn.COM>
Date: 20 Jun 88 12:56:32 GMT
References: <1809@van-bc.UUCP>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 27

In article <1809@van-bc.UUCP> lphillips@lpami.van-bc.UUCP (Larry Phillips) writes:
}Re: DRACO's use of reversed keywords for ending the construct:
}
}  One of the beefs I have with both C and Pascal is that all block
}structures end with the same keyword. I personally prefer them to be
}distinct for each block type,  ...

People with this prejudice (which I happen not to share) get around it
by using the preprocessor.  You can do something like
   #define THEN {
   #define ELSE } else {
   #define FI }
If you want to see the "closure" of that approach, if you can get access to a
set of UNIX sources, check out the source for the Bourne shell (although you
might have to find an old set of sources, because I haven't bothered to look
at the shell sources in years, but I hear that at long last someone (probably
at SUN) got fed up with fighting with mock-Algol (yup!) and rewrote the
mess -- it is still the old way in our 4.3 sources).

The compiler won't _enforce_ that you use the correct close to match
the open, of course, but that's what programming discipline is for
(just as the compiler won't force you to put a comment at the head of
every procedure stating what the procedure does).
   __
  /  )                              Bernie Cosell
 /--<  _  __  __   o _              BBN Labs, Cambridge, MA 02238
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