Re: vote on assignments as expressions

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 18:05:04 -0700 Mark Hahn <[email protected]> wrote:

> There have been two or three times that the topic of having assignments
> usable as expressions in Prothon has popped up in this list.  I want to vote
> on it.  We are getting near July and I'm trying to tie up loose ends and
> there are a million loose ends like this on the list.  (I'm also tying to
> break a record for starting the most threads in one day <grin>).
> 
> The proposal is to have an assignment syntax that can be used in an
> expression like "while item <- list.pop!(): process(item)".  We can't use
> the normal "a = b" because of the possible typo confusion in this situation:
> 
>     if a = b:
>             blah blah blah
> 
>     if a == b:
>             blah blah blah
> 
> So we need an alternative syntax like "a <- b", but I don't want to use that
> for all assignments because "a = b" is so common.  Once again familiarity
> beats logic.
> 
It depends on your background. I would be quite at home with := for assignment.

> Christian presented arguments against this in a thread starting here
> (amongst other topics):
>     http://www.prothon.org/pipermail/prothon-user/2004-June/002168.html
> 
> Paul proposed using "<-" but others are possible.  Let's vote on two things.
> First cast a vote on having the feature at all.  Then whether you want the
> feature or not, vote on which syntax you'd prefer.
> 
> # 1)  I WANT or DON'T WANT this feature in Prothon.
>
Only if the same operator is in all cases of assignment.
 
> #2) If I must have this feature, then I prefer the following syntax (look at
> these in your text editor):
> 
e)    a := b