Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL differentiated also between the "-" as an operator And the "-" as the sign of a negative number.
http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Books/APROGRAMMING%20LANGUAGE best regards Mike -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> Im Auftrag von John McKown Gesendet: Wednesday, July 17, 2019 19:09 An: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Betreff: Re: Where put the notional constant in a condition (Was RE: JCL COND Parameter) On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 11:59 AM Seymour J Metz <sme...@gmu.edu> wrote: > That's an excuse for Fortran, but PL/I already used colons, so why not :=? > I will go even farther that than. In today's world, especially outside of the z Series, I would prefer the APL assignment character: ← Of course, that is not on a keyboard. Well, except when I'm in my TN3270 emulator and turn on APL and press the [ key. But I love APL. So much so that I have a PC keyboard which has APL symbols on it. Because I use APL on Linux. > > 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 > -- 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
