[fpc-devel] is not operator

[Mattias Gaertner]

On 9/11/26 23:24, Sven Barth via fpc-devel wrote:
> Marco van de Voort via fpc-devel <fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org> schrieb
> am Fr., 11. Sep. 2026, 17:43:
>[...]
>> But two things to do the same things is nearly always worse.  For that
>> to be worthwhile the advantage must be massive, but that is not really
>> the case. It is superficial syntax at best.
>>
> 
> Yes. A language should be as orthogonal as possible to avoid confusing
> users with multiple ways to achieve the same goal.

Ehm, boolean expressions are not orthogonal in Pascal: and, or, xor, 
plus splitting into several if- and/or case-statements - you can express 
the same function in many different ways. And that is good. No human 
wants to use only nand.

Orthogonality can be confusing, when it makes the language harder to 
learn, or it creates ambiguous cases, e.g. due to precedence levels. 
That's not the case for "is not", or "not in". Even non Pascal 
programmers immediately understand them (Granted, my test sample is 
small 😉).

Mattias