On 2017-10-12, at 00:34, Rob van der Heij wrote:
>>
>> DO WHILE,TROT,R14,R2,B'0001',1
>> ENDDO
>>
> Constructs where evaluation of the condition has a side effect (or
> completely relies on the side effect) are often more a convenience to the
> writer than to the reader.
> When working in a language that encourages it, I try to restrain myself to
> common constructs like testing a null pointer with the assignment. There's
> something to say for languages where it's left to the compiler to optimize
> that.
>
Perhaps. OTOH, in POSIX shell, I loathe such novice constructs as:
some-command
if test $? = 0
then
other-command
fi
... instead of the simpler, intuitive to me:
some-command && other-command
I've known novices to go to outrageous constructs to avoid using
compound symbols as associative arrays. It pays to be familiar
with the power of your language. "You can write FORTRAN in any
language."
-- gil
