Andy's comments and positioning...

[Dar Scott]

On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 04:20 PM, Frank Leahy wrote:

> x = y + z has nothing to do with C, it's standard mathematics notation.

The mathematics notation that comes to my mind is that "x = y + z" is a 
statement that is true or false in some context, not an assignment.

> Every language that I've ever used, C, C++, Java, Eiffel, Perl, VB, 
> ASP, PHP, Lingo -- with the singular exception of xTalk -- uses x = y 
> + z instead of "put".

Well, isn't this a very narrow group?

I thought Eiffel uses the (much superior) Pascal notation of ':='.

Transcript does use (in some rough sense) a semantics closer to being 
friendly to standard mathematics notation for "=" in this:

if x = y + z then ...

Basic does use "let ... = " which, though not C, has its own problems.

Some languages before the existence of Hypercard used "put ... into 
..." (I helped build one), so this is not strictly a Hypercard thing.

Some languages overload = to mean 'defined as' in some contexts and 
'equals' in others.  Mathematics is in the same situation and some 
folks use a different symbol to mean 'defined as'.

Where we possibly agree is that Transcript need not allow the user to 
have memory leaks or to worry about pointer errors or to worry about 
garbage collection of freeing things or the like.  Those we can leave 
to C programmers.

Dar Scott