Re: improve language by dropping ;

Article View: comp.lang.misc

Article #2781

#2781

From: Theo Norvell
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 1991 20:50

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In article <1991Feb15.143327.22402@odin.diku.dk> torbenm@diku.dk (Torben [gidius Mogensen) writes:
>
>There was a long discussion about this on comp.lang.functional recently.
>
>The ability to drop the ;'s on line-breaks is called off-side rules.
>Languages that use off-side rules include Occam, Miranda and Haskell.
>
>	Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)


Not really.  These languages use indentation to express grouping
(parenthesization).  Getting rid of semicolons is an orthogonal issue
and can be done very easily without any reference to white space.
Consider the following language
	Program --> S
	S --> empty | S S | var id : T | V := E | if E then S else S fi
	    | while E do S od
No semicolons, no whitespace tricks.  Euclid and related languages use such
syntax.

Theo Norvell					norvell@csri.toronto.edu

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!norvell
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: norvell@csri.toronto.edu (Theo Norvell)
Subject: Re: improve language by dropping ;
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.155039.14384@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
References: <8507.27b91f9e@jetson.uh.edu> <1991Feb15.143327.22402@odin.diku.dk>
Date: 15 Feb 91 20:50:40 GMT
Lines: 21

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