🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <579@cbmger.UUCP> peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) writes:
>In article <1990Nov15.163126.7290@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> jap@convex.cl.msu.edu (Joe Porkka) writes:

>>People who complain about having to type extra spacing probably grew
>>up on BASIC and still like it.

>>Besides sovling the ambiguity problem, spaces make things READABLE.

Anyone complaining about spaces should spend a little time with SNOBOL4,
in which the space character is often an operator.

>I agree fully, but why do you mention BASIC? I belong to the crowd that
>used BASIC heavily on our PETs and CBMs and there the parser was so
>intelligent that you didn't need spaces! Only with the upcome of the
>"so intelligent" PCs we had to go back to spaces, sigh.

Actually, it's more like BASIC's parser was so SIMPLE, spaces were not
required.  For example, it would die in flames on an expression like:

	FOR FORMULA = LIFE TO DEATH:FRIEND = FRIEND + 1:NEXT

The lack of space room was an artifact of the memory savings methods
incorporated into these interpreters, and the fact that spaces took up
run-time memory and should be avoided when possible.  These took
precedence over sophistication, and rightly so for the intended job,
but they have no place on modern computers with reasonable amounts of
memory.

>Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel  // E-Mail to  \\  Only my personal opinions... 


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