On Sat, 2014-03-22 at 16:14 +0000, Brian Rogoff wrote: > On Saturday, 22 March 2014 at 13:03:06 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: > > ALGOL60 did not have significant whitespace and an offside > > rule, just > > like C, C++ and D don't, whereas Python, OCaml, etc. do. > > I've programmed in OCaml for many years and I somehow missed the > significant whitespace. Even the Revised syntax for OCaml (the > improved and unused one) did not use significant whitespace, > though I recall that there were unloved projects to provide such > a syntax.
I appear to have typed OCaml when I meant Haskell, possibly because I am trying to build Unison. You are correct (obviously :-) OCaml does not use an offside rule approach. In his response, Paulo points out that F# does, I did not appreciate this, so that is definitely a WILT. > C++ has a much nastier syntax than D (IMO of course :-) but the > SPECS proposal for a resyntaxed C++ never caught on. I liked some > of the improvements suggested there, in particular the more > Pascal-ish or Scala-ish declaration syntax, and would have liked > something like that in D, but there are so many more issues to be > fixed that daydreams of improved syntax seem frivolous to me. The Scala, Go, Rust, etc. use of "type after variable name" reads better for me, but C, C++, D, Java, Groovy, Ceylon are all "type before variable" (well the C++ rule is spiral out, but…), so I just get used to switching. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
