The early users of FORTRAN were perforce proficient assembly-language
programmers. The notion that statements in what I prefer to call
statement-level procedural languages--They are not always higher-level
ones--were, in effect, macros was obvious to them, so obvious that it often but
not always went unsaid.
This had its down side. Since these SLPL statements were like macros, it was
not so obvious as it should have been that SLPLs needed their own, superimposed
macro facilities too. These facilities were long in coming; and all of them
are still inadequate, even toy-like. (The best of them, that of PL/I, provides
almost no access tyo symbol-table information.)
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
