🚀 go-pugleaf

>>I find := for assignment to be quite obnoxious.  ... misleading ...
>>In math : is often used for comparison, as in ratios.
>>
>>Cyber folklore around the office has it that := originated in Europe
>>as something that looked similar to [left arrow].
>If they wanted to preserve the appearance, I would expect that "<-" or "<="
>would have been a better choice.  I've always believed that the ":=" (in ALGOL
>and its successors) was taken directly from the identical mathematical symbol.
>Since you find it "misleading", I presume you've never seen the mathematical
>usage of ":="?

I was a math major in college and I can't ever remember seeing := used in a
mathematical rather than computer science context.  In what branch of math
is it used and what does it mean?  If there is a current mathematical usage
of this symbol, are you sure that it didn't derive from the computer usage?
(After all, Algol and its descendants have been around for a long time.)

>Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
>(Followups to comp.lang.misc; this is not C-related anymore.)

Kurt W. Hirchert
National Center for Supercomputing Applications