Once More With Feeling

Post #57,406 by deSitter 10/17/02 5:09:06 PM Reply	Once More With Feeling Everything in UNIX is byte-stream oriented. The compiler chews on a byte stream. Because it was developed as a time-share system with terminals (a radical idea at that time), it uses newlines to format byte-streams for the screen. That's a particular delimiter. The C compiler uses another delimiter in its input stream of code - and GASP! someone had the thought that it would be a GOOD THING if humans could SEE them! The semi-colon is very expressive - stop, but keep going. It's a total, complete, non-issue. -drl
Post #57,751 by tablizer 10/18/02 11:20:43 PM Reply	I don't care about the 1970's, I hate them here and now That is a bunch of bolarky! There are plenty of non-semicolon languages that run just fine on UNIX. If semi's made stuff easier in the 70's, well, this is NOT the 70's. Get modern. I don't like semi's and work faster without the damned things. That is a FACT. If you like them, that is fine, but don't force them down everybody else's throat. ________________ oop.ismad.com
Post #57,775 by static 10/19/02 12:43:55 AM Reply	Simple solution. And that is don't use languages with semi-colons as statement terminators, if it bothers you so much. There's no need (or call) for you to insist that everyone subscribe to your view. I happen to intensely dislike identifiers with a leading underscore, but I can't make everyone stop using them. (Fortunately, it's less of an issue for me in PHP because of the leading $ on all variables.) Wade. "Ah. One of the difficult questions."
Post #57,782 by deSitter 10/19/02 1:54:47 AM Reply	The Galileo of Computing! Sorry. It's really funny to watch you have a stroke over a stupid delimiter. Maybe we should replace it by a new character just for you - the "catastrophe". -drl
Post #58,195 by tablizer 10/22/02 2:32:44 AM Reply	Others complain too It's really funny to watch you have a stroke over a stupid delimiter. That happens to be the topic at hand. If you have Bertrand Meyer's OOSC2 you will see that others have found it problematic also. Page 897 partial quote: "The War of the Semicolon [title]....Two clans inhabit the computer world, and the hatred between them is as ferocious as it is ancient...." It is just one of those annoying things that keep slowing things down. I used Pascal extensively in College, and never did get used to semi's. Perhaps if all the langs I ever used only had semi's, then it would be a natural habit by now. However, I encounter a mix. If one keeps losing their car keys once every 2 weeks, then a combination-based lock starts to look pretty good (like the Nissan Maxima). BTW, some non-semi languages do NOT need VB-style dashes or continuation characters. Python and LISP come to mind. ________________ oop.ismad.com

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