That's an excuse for Fortran, but PL/I already used colons, so why not :=?
By the time C came along that excuse was even less viable. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of John McKown <john.archie.mck...@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2019 12:50 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Where put the notional constant in a condition (Was RE: JCL COND Parameter) On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 11:23 AM Steve Smith <sasd...@gmail.com> wrote: > The original sin was making "=" the assignment operator. I guess we can > blame that on FORTRAN, and it must make mathematicians cringe still. > I haven't said anything, but I think you're correct. Of course, in the "bad old days" of punch cards, there weren't a whole lot of choices. For these types of languages, where = can mean either comparison or assignment, I like to code comparisons with literals with the literal on the left hand side. E.g. IF 0 = X THEN rather than IF X = 0 THEN. > > sas > > -- We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise. -- Larry Wall Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
