Re: TeX and Pascal [was Re: The joy of FORTRAN]

On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 16:34:15 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:

On 10/1/2024 3:48 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 1 Oct 2024 16:14:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
 

And knowing that p=(x>y?3:2);

I would have done it without the parentheses. There’s too much
parenthesis clutter around as it is.

 
Add some spaces, and you've got something downright readable:
 
    p = x > y ? 3 : 2;
 
Maybe add parentheses around the comparison, especially if it's long or
complex, which this isn't:
 
    p = (x > y) ? 3 : 2;
 
It's idiomatic C. It's everywhere. Perl and Python have something
similar. So does Unisys ALGOL, not that anyone cares:
 
    P := IF X > Y THEN 3 ELSE 2;
 
If you want to see gratuitous cleverness for the sake of cleverness,
there's this:
 
    p = (x > y) + 2;
 
Please don't do that. Would you write:
 
    P := REAL((X > Y) AND TRUE) + 2;
 
if you were doing this in ALGOL?
 
I didn't think so.
 
Louis
 
 
 
 
 

I like the Unisys version. At the cost of a couple of characters it’s
readable. The C version is not straightforward for those of us for whom
C is a second or third language.

The C version, of course, was merely a syntactic change from the BCPL
version (on which, via B, it was based):

 p := (x > y) -> 3, 2

(parentheses optional)

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