Re: RPG

In the design of a computer language it is very important to avoid any
ambiguity, and often a "not necessary" separator helps to detect syntax
errors.

Also, it is important to consider the "multiline statements", if "end of
line" marks the end of the statement, you need some "continuation
marker", like the coma in REX to write a long statement.

Otherwise the language needs grouping marks, like {} or "begin - end"

Other "funny" thing in RPG is the use of "colon" between parameter or
indexes, and that is because in "the rest of the world" the coma is used
to mark the decimals. In other languages we must adopt the "decimal
point" when writing programs.

On 07/19/2016 07:30 PM, John Yeung wrote:

On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 6:37 PM, Vernon Hamberg
<vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:) I didn't say I LIKED semicolons - just that they're not all that weird
or crazy.

You're still not getting it then. It's not that semicolons themselves
are weird or crazy. It's that they go in weird places in RPG that they
don't go in ANY other language, even those with semicolons.

In most languages, the following code snippet is not a complete,
self-contained statement:

if x > 0

Since it's not a statement, it shouldn't end in a semicolon.

Let me try to make an analogy: In English, we use the period to denote
the end of a sentence. How does it feel to write the following in
English:

If you are happy and you know it. Clap your hands.

RPG is making us punctuate our sentences like the above. It's just not
comfortable or intuitive for people who have already learned standard
English punctuation and have been using it their whole lives.

John Y.

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