Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari!aplcen!uunet!mcsun!sunic!enea!sommar
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Hyphen as identifier characters
Message-ID: <810@enea.se>
Date: 24 Feb 90 22:45:39 GMT
References: <48a55876.12c9a@digital.sps.mot.com> <776@enea.se> <448@fwi.uva.nl>
Organization: Enea Data AB, Sweden
Lines: 20

Freek Wiedijk (freek@fwi.uva.nl) writes:
>I said:
> >Since hyphens are used for minus signs to, introducing them
> >is not trivial, particulary not in an existsing language. E.g,
> >      c:=a-b;
> >would suddenly be ambiguous.
>
>In Ada it would be worse! :-)
>
>	n:=n-foo-bar--subtract foo-bar from n

I don't understand what would make things worse in Ada. OK,
I see that postponing the semi-colon to the next line you can
mess it up with the comment delimiter.

Incidently, if I'm not totally confused, the comment 
   subtract foo-bar from n
is perfectly correct Cobol, including the hyphen.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se