Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!encore!bzs
From: bzs@Encore.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Old-fashioned assignment operators (was Re: braces
Message-ID: <4421@xenna.Encore.COM>
Date: 17 Dec 88 18:26:45 GMT
References: <9076@smoke.BRL.MIL> <14020049@hpisod2.HP.COM> <212@UNIX386.Convergent.COM> <2151@uokmax.UUCP> <2155@uokmax.UUCP>
Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA
Lines: 21
In-reply-to: rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP's message of 16 Dec 88 22:53:37 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.15 of Tue Jun  9 1987 on xenna (berkeley-unix)


I think Gwyn speaks a little too soon about nuking old interpretations
of =op, an incredibly boring find on both 4.3 and SYSVR3 sources
reveals several instances of =op stubbornly remain (I can't say this
was exhaustive, it was however exhausting):

	all over Pascal in 4.3bsd
	lex/sub1.c (both 4.3 and SysV)
	mkfs (SYSVR3)

Most of these seemed to use a space to dismabiguate and almost
certainly intended V6 semantics as they're utilities that date back to
around then. There might be more but that's enough to make the point.

I agree they could/should be cleaned up but it was a useful exercise
before believing that the compiler's semantics could be safely
changed. (Note: this is in everyone's code derived from either 4.3 or
SYSV so Unix systems which have changed the compiler semantics and not
the code almost certainly have introduced bugs into their systems.)

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||