Long, long ago I used a German-based assembler for a Zuse machine without any notable difficulties. Moreover, I have two now old French friends, who then knew no English, but who learned to use the English-keyword version of PL/I with some help from me.
Reverting to "English symbol names and labels" will presumably always be possible in, say, a German-based statement-level language. Certainly the reverse is now usual. I see a lot of Canadian and European assembly-language and PL/I source programs, and the identifiers used in them always reflect the local language and sometimes local xenophobia. (In France the word 'stop' is used in programs and on street and highway signage; in Québec 'arrêt' is always used instead. I treasure my copy of a set of C #define statements written in Montréal that replace local French-language versions of C's reserved words with the canonical English-language ones at compile time, thus obviating any requirement to write such an obscenity as 'stop'. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
