Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bunny!jwg1
From: jwg1@bunny.UUCP (James W. Gish)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Eiffel suggestion
Message-ID: <6388@bunny.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 88 15:49:59 GMT
References: <6385@bunny.UUCP>
Reply-To: jwg1@bunny.UUCP (James W. Gish)
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA
Lines: 33

In article <6385@bunny.UUCP> jwg1@bunny.UUCP (that's me) wrote:
>One of the things that drove me nuts about Simula 67 was the absence
>of a concatenation operator. It did have a TEXT attribute called
>CONCAT, but it was rather unwieldy to use if you had to do much string
>processing at all.

I realized after I posted this, that Simula did NOT have a CONCAT TEXT
attribute.  In fact, it was less well equipted than Eiffel since it
didn't have an append or prepend.  It's been so long since I've been
fortunate enough to use Simula, that I forgot that I had my own concat
function.  My apologies to other Simula aficianados for the incorrect info.

In all fairness to Eiffel, so far I think it looks like a very good
language.  And it good be a great language if minimal steps are taken
to add certain language features.  For example, a Loop construct with
an exit and a Case statement are really needed.  The decision to have
only an "until" clause, and not provide a "while" clause is a mistake.
Some loop conditions read much better as "while" clauses, and if they
read better, there probably is a better chance of them being written
correctly.

Although the designers goal of keeping the language simple is a noble
one, without certain powerful yet elegant capabilities, like
loop/exit, it becomes tedius to write large programs.  I realize that
the preference for certain language features is subjective, but I
think Eiffel needs some "shaking out" to determine what needs to be
added.  I hope that the members of this newsgroup can make a positive
contribution to doing just that.

-- 
Jim Gish
GTE Laboratories, Inc., Waltham, MA
CSNET: jgish@gte.com    UUCP:  ..!harvard!bunny!jwg1