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000040_icon-group-sender _Wed Oct 28 09:42:25 1992.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Wed, 28 Oct 1992 09:45:47 MST
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1992 09:42:25 MST
From: "Ralph Griswold" <ralph>
Message-Id: <199210281642.AA24982@cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu>
To: icon-group
Subject: semicolons
Status: R
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
I normally stay out of "discussions" like this, but I can't resist
remarking that, in practice, the semicolon insertion performed
by the Icon translator works well in practice, programmers like it,
it's been touted as one of the nice little touches that makes
Icon a pleasure to use, and I don't recall a single complaint
about the feature from a practicing Icon programmer (once they
understand it).
The wisdom on idiomatic Icon programming is that semicolons should
never appear (syntactically) in Icon programs.
If you want to argue syntax, what semicolon insertion does is
give line terminators syntactic significance. In most programs,
an Icon programmer thinks of a newline (or whatever your favorite
platform uses to terminate lines) in the same way programmers
in languages with similar syntax think of semicolons.
Ralph E. Griswold ralph@cs.arizona.edu
Department of Computer Science uunet!arizona!ralph
The University of Arizona 602-621-6609 (voice)
Tucson, AZ 85721 602-621-9618 (fax)