The great semi-colon debate.

Post #4,838 by static 8/13/01 6:34:46 AM Reply	The great semi-colon debate. A number of the regulars will remember some while ago some rather umm fiery debate about the value and utility of semi-colons in programming languages, new and old. Well, I happened to find an [link\|http://icon.cs.unlv.edu/godiva/semi.html\|archived discussion] oriented around that point. I must admit to being somewhat surprised. To my way of thinking, C comes with semi-colons as statement terminators, end of story. But in Icon, they are statement separators - a task for which a newline almost always does. Basically, that's how the language works. The page above, though, is a side page off the web page for a language called Godiva: which adds a number of features of Icon to Java. Including the optional semi-colons. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #5,760 by JimWeirich 8/18/01 1:51:53 PM Reply	Re: The great semi-colon debate. I love Bertrand Meyers comments on semicolons. In the chapter on style in OOSC2, he defines Separists (those who use semicolons as statement separators), Terminists (those who use semi-colons as statement terminators) and Discardists (those who discard semi-colons entirely, except where ambiguious). Eiffel started life as a Separtist language, but now supports any of the three styles. In reference to the examples in OOSC2, he writes ... "As to this book: for a while I stuck to the original Separatist style, more out of habit than of real commitment; then, hearing the approach of the third millenium and its call to start a new life free of antique superstitions, I removed all the semicolons over a single night of utter debauchery." -- -- Jim Weirich jweirich@one.net [link\|http://w3.one.net/~jweirich\|http://w3.one.net/~jweirich] --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
Post #5,938 by static 8/20/01 1:12:29 AM Reply	I like discarding them. I've been doing some Icon programming recently, and I didn't use a single one. In fact, I will put statements on separate lines rather than insert a semi-colon. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"

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