Hi,

I would like to use "_" as a normal character. I won't miss it as an
assignment statement.

I learned smalltalk when "_" (or approx. "<-" for the onscreen glyph) for
assignment was all there was. I didn't like ":=" at first, but then I
didn't like looking at "_" on print outs and in non-smalltalk code editors
either. I prefer ":=" now and always change code that uses "_" into a ":="
as a matter of good coding style. It's just easier to read and I find that
people who know other programming languages feel ":=" to be more familar to
them than "_".

Besides the onscreen glyph for the left arror assignment operator should
not have been mapped to the underscore character in the first place. (I
wonder why it was choosen? Just because the underscore is the closest to
the left arror assignment character? Anyone know?). 

Unlinking the left arrow from the underscore character will free the
underscore character from years of being forced to impersonate another
glyph. ;--)

What is needed is another character that can be generated from the keyboard
for the left arrow assginment. But it's too late for that since other
Smaltalks have already adopted the ":=" as the assignment character.

I also find that a lot of people just learning Smalltalk have a difficult
time with the return symbol "^". Maybe it should be replaced with the
keyword "return" as in "return anObject" in place of "^anObject"? This
would make the language a little more familar to all those crazy and wacky
"C" and "C++" programmers out there! ;--)

All the best,

Peter W. Lount
peter at smalltalk.org

p.s. Caution while reading. This email contains highly combustable material
that might ignite into flames. ;--)

----------
From: Dan Ingalls <DanI at wdi.disney.com>
To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Must _ go like the Dodo?
Date: March 15, 1999 8:45 PM

>>I think this is the way to go.  I would not try to deal with a minus sign
>>here, but underbar should be usable when we drop the old assignment.  [I
>>don't plan to do this until v3.0 because it implies a change of the
>>sources].  I have been wanting dotted global names for quite a while.
>
> ... many near-flames snipped...
>
>Long live _ !

Folks -

I couldn't care less about _, except that I have heard a lot of reasons
*from people on this list* for wanting to use _ as a normal character and
not for assignment.

What I said above means we won't do it right away, not we're planning to do
it soon.  Jeesh.

Was there anything else of interest in those messages?

	- Dan