Re: Re: vote on assignments as expressions

Paul Prescod wrote:

> I almost think I would purposely use it everywhere, for two reasons:
>
>   1) consistency between different contexts
>
>   2) because it has always irritated me that programming languages use
> "==" to mean what mathematicians call "=" and "=" to mean something
> that mathematicians rarely do.

That bothers me.  What are newbies going to think when they see your code
posted with := and other's code posted with = ?

This is an unacceptable problem.  I can think of three solutions...

1) Have the interpreter throw an exception when := is the last operation on
a line.

2) Replace = with := for regular assignments.

3) Not add this assignment-as-expression feature

I gave some thought to how = ended up as an assignment operator.  Fortran is
the oldest usage I know of.  My guess is that they were thinking "make a = b
at the end of the operation".  Fortran stands for Formula Translation so
they were definitely thinking of math.