Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!bbn!husc6!cmcl2!stealth.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <24123:04:14:07@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 22 Feb 90 04:14:08 GMT
References: <22569:05:10:24@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <8475@wpi.wpi.edu> <4489:05:14:19@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <10790@june.cs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Organization: IR
Lines: 16

In article <10790@june.cs.washington.edu> machaffi@fred.cs.washington.edu.cs.washington.edu (Scott MacHaffie) writes:
> Unconditional loops have a serious problem: you have to read all of the
> code inside the loop to find out when (or if) it terminates. Replacing
> while and for with loop would be a bad idea. Even providing loop
> means that people will use it and stick "end loop" inside the loop
> (this happens in ada).

This is specious. Assume break and if; then while, do, for, and loop
are all equivalent, in the sense that each can be written purely
syntactically in terms of any of the others. Therefore (in line with
the goals of the language, to evolve in another thread) the simplest
construction wins. (There are several criteria for choosing ``loop''
as the simplest; but I don't think anyone will argue, so I won't
elaborate further.)

---Dan