Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz>:
> I don't agree that the word "for" necessarily implies proceduralness.
Programming languages stole the word from math, where it is
nonprocedural.
Really, "for" is just a preposition. In Algol, for example,
proceduralness was not in the word "for" but in "do":
for p := 1 step 1 until n do
for q := 1 step 1 until m do
if abs(a[p, q]) > y then
begin y := abs(a[p, q]);
i := p; k := q
end
<URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL#ALGOL_60>
Pascal is similar:
for i:= 1 to 10 do writeln(i);
<URL: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/pascal/pascal_for_do_loop.htm>
As is sh:
for i in *.py; do
mv "$i" "$i.bak"
done
Common lisp uses "do" as well:
(setq a-vector (vector 1 nil 3 nil))
(do ((i 0 (+ i 1)) ;Sets every null element of a-vector to zero.
(n (array-dimension a-vector 0)))
((= i n))
(when (null (aref a-vector i))
(setf (aref a-vector i) 0))) => NIL
<URL: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw60/CLHS/Body/m_do_do.
htm>
I guess we have C to blame for the redefinition of the word "for" in
programmers' minds.
Marko
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
