Abe Kornelis lamented: > I daresay - even if it has always been that way, > it still feels counter-intuitive to me. > Of course, that is not really an argument. > And really, the difference in handling either > quotes or ampersands makes it only worse.
I think it's been that way since about 1968 or so. I checked my old Assembler (F) manual and it states that ampersands are not paired when assigning character constants in SETC expressions. I agree that it's counter-intuitive, and suspect it was necessary to avoid accidental identification of variable symbols in complex or nested substitutions.
