Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ingr!brooke
From: brooke@ingr.com. (Brooke King)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: colon-equal vs equal
Message-ID: <3316@ingr.com.>
Date: 30 Dec 88 00:12:47 GMT
References: <3300001@uxg.cso.uiuc.edu> <2286@garth.UUCP>
Reply-To: brooke@ingr.UUCP (Brooke King)
Organization: Intergraph Corp. Huntsville, AL -- but opinions are all mine!
Lines: 34

In article <2286@garth.UUCP> smryan@garth.UUCP (Xxxxxx Xxxx) writes:
| >How did the := come into being in languages like Algol, Pascal, and Ada?
| 
| IAL 58.
| 
| >I still prefer the way it is in C (and a little lesser so in Rexx and
| 
| Booooo! Hisssss!
| 
| It's all in how you read it. I read `a:=b' as `a becomes b' not `a equals b.'
| `a equals b' is `a=b.'

I read C's "a = b" and Pascal's "a := b" as "a receives b," "a
receives b's value" or "a receives the value of b."  I usually
stick with "a receives b."

I read C's "a == b" and Pascal's "a = b" as "a is b."  In C, I
make use of the preprocessor to avoid accidental "=" where I mean
"==" -- I always use "IS" (# define IS ==) instead of "==" so I
haven't made that mistake in seven years (the length of time I
have been using the trick).  No, it isn't original;  a friend
used a similar trick.

I also use "ISNT" for "!=", "NOT" for "!", "AND" for "&&", and
"OR" for "||".  They all make reading logical expressions rather
natural.  They also help me avoid my mistyping bitwise {"&" "|"}
operators for logical {"&&" "||"} operators and vice versa. 

| So what about the shift-key? We're all touch-typists, rught?

I am, Mr. Ryan, but many of our coworkers are not.  :-) ^^^^^
-- 

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