> From my early conversations with Larry, I recall that the reason is that > RSTS/E BASIC-PLUS had nested trailing modifiers, and both Larry and I saw > many abuses of these over the years. Therefore, he decided not to repeat > that abomination, limiting it to precisely one level deep. I'm happy for > that.
Thank you. This is the sort of answer I was looking for. > Yeah, every once in a while, I've wanted the second layer, but I'm willing > to rewrite the statement as a true normal if/while instead of a backwards > if/while, and it *does* help the overall readability. I'd concede that the actual useful uses are rare enough to not warrant giving a feature that could turn hopelessly ugly quickly - even if the current generation of tools make it easy to add the feature. Paul