[fpc-devel] Proposal: Multiple assignments

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Sven Barth wrote:

> Well... in C a test for equality is always "==". So, when reading it 
> (and not having read a Pascal code some minutes before :P ) one should 
> recognize without problems whether it's an assignment or a comparison 
> expression (it's another story that many people - including me - don't 
> recognize it that easily ^^)

As in the classic patch

+       if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))
+                       retval = -EINVAL;

which somebody tried to slip into the Linux kernel.

I think though that you only need distinct tokens (i.e. == vs = in the 
case of C) if the language includes multiple assignments. Or possibly I 
should say indeterminate assignments, lest there are cases where being 
able to discard a function's return value introduces ambiguity.

So some variant of OP's suggestion such as (a, b):= 0 does have 
something going for it, at least when compared with a:= b:= 0. In fact- 
although I don't know whether this is parseable- (a, b):= X with 
implicit duplication as compared with (a, b):= (X, Y) where both sides 
have to match, since <wild_speculation> this is beginning to look like 
something that could be parallelised </>.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]