Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: colon-equal vs equal
Message-ID: <2567@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 27 Dec 88 06:12:58 GMT
References: <3300001@uxg.cso.uiuc.edu> <3290002@hpctdls.HP.COM>
Organization: Xenix Support
Lines: 20

In article <3290002@hpctdls.HP.COM>, rbk@hpctdls.HP.COM (Richard Katz) writes:
> as a boolean operator and := as asignment.  First, := seems better
> since  i = i + 1 looks real funny.  Also, a nice feature is that
> 'if ( i := 10 )' will produce a syntax error in Pascal while
> 'if ( i =  10 )' will produce an assignment in C, usually not
> intended.  FORTRAN uses .EQ. to make sure that there is no mixup

This has nothing to do with :=/= versus =/==. This has to do with C being an
expression-based language and Pascal being a statement-based language. There
are expression-based languages which use := and allow you to say things like
"if flag := f1 and f2 then...".

Just so long as you have two tokens. If you want to flame a language, try
BASIC ("if a = b then a = c"... the first is a comparison, the second an
assignment).
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180.   `-_-'
Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net.                 'U`
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