Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!crltrx!decvax!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <16136@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 10 Mar 90 00:46:21 GMT
References: <22569:05:10:24@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <8475@wpi.wpi.edu> <24123:04:14:07@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <1966@l.cc.purdue.edu> <191@gollum.twg.com> <78=1NPDxds13@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 34

In article <78=1NPDxds13@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In c-ish syntax, how about this as the loop construct:
>	while (expr)
>		statement
>	while (expr)
>		statement
>	...

You'd need to tweak the syntax to distinguish a two-exit loop from two
adjacent loops, of course.

>Explicit breaks or continues would be deprecated...

I'm not sure how well the issue addressed by this "multiple while" corresponds
to that addressed by break and continue.

(Note: If it's really a *new* language, rather than a suggestion for the next
version of C, then you don't need to deprecate things--you simply remove them
immediately.  There's no backward compatability problem.)

>The for loop would come out as:
>	initial
>	while (test)
>		body
>	while (true)
>		increment

I must object.  The whole point of C's for-statement is to put all the loop
control in one place, at the top of the statement.  This looks like a step
backwards.  And isn't that clause "while (true)" a no-op in this language?
I'd expect it to normally be omitted, so that the increment is simply the last
statement of the body.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint