Re: vote on assignments as expressions

Mark Hahn wrote:

> #2) If I must have this feature, then I prefer the following syntax
> (look at these in your text editor):
>
>         a)    a <- b
>
>         b)    a <! b
>
>         c)    a <: b
>
>         d)    a <~ b
>
>         e)    a := b
>
>         f)    a gets b
>
>         g)    <other>

Laurent, in the middle of some late-night ramblings <grin>, correctly
pointed out that "a <- b" has the problem than anyone typing "a < -b"
without spaces will inadvertently get "a<-b".  This is a real problem.

So I would say we should rule out a) and d) for this reason.  These two are
the only two that looked like arrows of course. :-)

I cast one vote for using this feature and one vote for e).  I feel "a := b"
is well-known from Pascal and looks like a real assignment statement without
being in danger of being confused with "a == b" (at least not in my text
editor).

BTW: I Just realized there is no clean way to stop someone from using "a :=
b" on a line by itself since an expression is allowed on a line by itself.
We will strongly suggest they not do this.  This is actually an argument to
use choice e ( ":=" ), since it looks the most like a normal assignment and
will cause the least readability problem if they do this.