On 24.03.2018 18:40, Jonas Maebe wrote:
The C-syntax is indeed consequent, and that is what I referred to: the assignments work the same way as elsewhere in the program, so multiple initialisations are just as clear as single initialisations there. In Pascal, you have a special syntax for initialised variables/constants, and hence extending it to work on multiple variables/fields does not have the advantage that you subconsciously immediately know what happens based on your knowledge of the rest of the language.
I still don't understand how anybody can think that the syntax "var A, B: Integer = 0;" is unclear and doesn't immediately recognize that 0 is applied both to A and B. Honestly it would never come to my mind if you haven't raised this question.
As you Jonas said, Pascal syntax for initialization of variables/constants is a special one after all and therefore you do need to know it. Explaining/documenting the fact that you can initialize multiple variables/constants at once is one extra sentence. Just one sentence. In a documentation that you need to read anyway because the initialization syntax is unusual.
Anyway, my favorite example of non-pascalish syntax within FPC are the +=, -= etc. operators. I really don't understand how they made it into FPC if so many FPC developers are stubbornly against simple and helpful extensions :)
Ondrej _______________________________________________ fpc-devel maillist - fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
