Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!rutgers!att!kaiser!npl
From: npl@kaiser.UUCP (N Landsberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Statement terminators
Message-ID: <873@kaiser.UUCP>
Date: 10 May 89 17:01:49 GMT
References: <2296@mit-caf.MIT.EDU>, <13292@lanl.gov>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner
Lines: 16

Regarding the original thoughts about not requiring ';' at the end
of a line, consider the following:
	/* code fragment begins */
	for(p=begin;p->p_next;p=p->p_next) /* DO NOTHING */ ;
	{ /* <---- note!!! */
		/* declarations */
		/* do something */
	}
	/* end of code fragment */
Without the trailing ';' it is unclear whether the block is to be
executed as part of the loop.  While it is possible to make the
loop unambigious by moving the assignment into a statement in the
loop body, my point is that the above is perfectly valid C and
by implying that end-of-line is statement terminator AND then
leaving off the trailing ';' you open up a whole new set of
latent bugs to track down.