The assignment character in 3.9 and onward

Bill Schwab BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu
Thu Jun 8 18:48:58 UTC 2006


Ralph,

=============================
> I do not see it that way at all.  Squeak's handling/abuse of
underscores
> has been a pain to me for a long time, and I am apparently not alone.
> Please note that I am proposing a solution that would let you type _
for
> assignment.  However, I am convinced that it was a mistake to allow
what
> should be an editor macro to get built into the compiler and tarnish
the
> sources.

You didn't answer his question.  He wanted to know why it was a pain.
He already knew that someone thought it was a pain.  He argued that it
was not a pain because you could easily convert from one form to
another, and he wanted to know why his argument was wrong.
=============================

I didn't avoid the question: I redirected it, if that.  My point is
clear, and I stated clearly.  The mistake is abusing the underscore, and
doing so in the compiler/sources rather than the editor.




=============================
The use of an equal
sign for assignment is really stupid and one of the arbitrary and
unintuitive communication choices that programmers have made.  := is a
little better, but not much.  Left arrow makes it obvious that a value
is moving from the right to the left.
=============================

I don't care what glyph people want to use, as long as it is not a
character that should be left free for use elsewhere.  By all means, use
unicode to add a proper back arrow if you wish.

Bill



Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bills at anest4.anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029




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