Re: else ladders practice

On 03/11/2024 17:00, David Brown wrote:

On 02/11/2024 21:44, Bart wrote:

(Note that the '|' is my example is not 'or'; it means 'then':
>
    (  c |    a )          # these are exactly equivalent
    if c then a fi
>
    (  c |    a |    b )     # so are these [fixed]
    if c then a else b fi
>
There is no restriction on what a and b are, statements or expressions, unless the whole returns some value.)

 Ah, so your language has a disastrous choice of syntax here so that sometimes "a | b" means "or", and sometimes it means "then" or "implies", and sometimes it means "else".

I missed this part of a very long post until JP commented on it.
As I mentioned above, "|" here doesn't mean 'or' at all. In "( ... | ... | ... )", the first means "then" and the second "else". (It also wasn't my idea, it was taken from Algol 68.)

Why have a second syntax with a confusing choice of operators when you have a perfectly good "if / then / else" syntax?

if/then/else suits multi-line statements. (||) suits terms that are part of a larger one-line expression.
I might as well ask why C uses ?: when it has if-else, or why it needs P->m when it has (*P).m.

Or if you feel an operator adds a lot to the language here, why not choose one that would make sense to people, such as "=>" - the common mathematical symbol for "implies".

It is not an operator, it is part of '(x | x,x,x | x)' syntax.