3.9a-7006: ":=" replaced by "_"

Wolfgang Helbig helbig at lehre.ba-stuttgart.de
Thu Mar 9 22:15:56 UTC 2006


Marcus Denker <denker at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> On 08.03.2006, at 09:38, Dan Corneanu wrote:
> 
> > Marcus Denker wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Before 3.9 goes beta, we will have relaced all the _ by :=, and
> >> everything will be fine.
> >>
> >>       Marcus
> >>
> > What happend with '<-' ? I kind of liked it more than ':=' or '_'.
> >
> 
> There is no backarrow on my keyboard, and there is no backarrow
> in the ASCII font. Especially, it is *extremely* strange to just co-opt
> the underscore. What if I want to use an underscore? What
> about copy and paste? Ever tried to read an email containing Squeak
> code?

It looks fine. I'm using celeste.
> 
> So the re-defined _ was clearly a bug, and thus we fixed it.

Hmm, I believe you broke it. 

I fixed the squeak scanner so it only accepts the back arrow for
assignment, thus making it more like the original ST-80 scanner. This
simplifies the grammar a little, removes complexity and thus adds beauty
to the system as a whole.

Furthermore, the back arrow expresses the assignment much better than
"=" or ":=", the latter being easily mispronounced as "equals" instead
of "becomes".

I really love the back arrow -- and a three button mouse, even if it
does not comply to current expectations or hardware.

Regards,

Wolfgang Helbig



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