I
I. Appel
I'd say Delphi has the clearest syntax.
Well, yes. But Python or Visual Basic code is IMO even more readable.
Well, yes. But Python or Visual Basic code is IMO even more readable.
J
Joe Wright
Dan said:
Usually the Rule starts at the left margin and the Command is on the
next line indented with the TAB character. I always found this TAB a
nuisance because my editor puts spaces out when I press Tab key.
Imagine my joy upon reading that GNU make (if not others) also
allows separating Rule from Command with semicolon.
# Use GNU make to build an executable for testing GE.
cc=gcc
obj=ge.o main.o
exe=main.exe
opt=-W -Wall -ansi -pedantic -O2 -c
# Note that semicolon (not TAB) separates Rule from Command on a line.
$(exe) : $(obj) ; $(cc) -s $(obj) -o $(exe)
ge.o : ge.c ; $(cc) $(opt) ge.c
main.o : main.c ge.h ; $(cc) $(opt) main.c
G
Goran Larsson
Joe Wright said:
This is a standard make feature. In a way it is the fundamental
method to separate the dependency list from the commands. The
lines startong with TABs are just continuation lines for the commands.
J
James Kanze
|> Alan Balmer wrote:
|> > On Thu, 27 May 2004 04:36:24 +0100, C# Learner <csharp@learner.here>
|> > wrote:
|> [...]
|> > Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that you don't have
|> > a deep enough understanding of the C language, and indeed of
|> > programming languages in general, to appreciate the reasons for
|> > the syntax features you're commenting on.
|> I believe that I appreciate the reasons for these features. What I'm
|> saying is that I think that there are better (in terms of allowing
|> the user of the language to write readable code) alternatives that
|> could have been implemented instead.
|> > Take your original example of eliminating the deli meters around
|> > the conditional in an if statement. Think about what this would
|> > mean for compound conditions. Combine that with the Python-style
|> > blocking and then think about an if statement which tests for
|> > several conditions, requiring more than one line to write.
|> a) Valid C syntax:
|> if (foo &&
|> bar) {
|> foobar();
|> }
|> b) Similar code to the above but using my suggested syntax changes:
|> if foo &&
|> bar:
|> foobar();
|> Why wouldn't (b) be feasible here?
|> Everything from 'if' to ':' is considered the condition.
Even if there is a ?: operator in the conditional expression?
|> After the newline after ':', whitespace is required to form a code
|> block.
Let's see, you want to overload on whitespace?
|> > As you study and understand the language, you'll find that it's
|> > all nicely consistent, and that there are good reasons for most of
|> > the features which seem odd to you.
|> The only way in which they seem odd to me is that they make code
|> much less readable than it could be, in my opinion.
Things like C's declaration syntax make code less readable. But you
didn't mention that. The preprocessor can be really effective in making
code less readable too, but you didn't mention that either. And of
course, all those funny characters really made code less readable back
in the days when I had to work with an ISO 646 terminal -- in the German
variant.
But you seem to be attacking areas where C basically has no serious
problems. I personally prefer something like:
if expr then
stmt_list
else
stmt_list
endif
but the alternative used by C is pretty acceptable too. (And my
preference may have been conditioned by the ISO 646 terminals above.
Things like:
if ( expr ) ä
stmt_list
ü else ä
stmt_list
ü
are not particularly readable.)
|> Okay, if you don't agree with the 'if'..':' idea, then how about
|> changing the parentheses required for test conditions for a
|> different pair of characters? An ideal pair would be a pair that
|> isn't used elsewhere in the language, for readability's sake.
|> > One of the characteristics of C is terseness, and extra parens
|> > aren't required by the language for no reason.
|> My point is that a different construct could be substituted in each
|> case.
|> > Also, think about the fact that language inventors and
|> > implementers are, by and large, a pretty bright bunch. In general,
|> > they probably have more and wider experience in the field than you
|> > do, and some of them might even be as smart ;-)
Let's not get carried away. Language designers don't work in a vacuum,
and C is like it is for a variety of historical reasons.
|> So those who invented C's syntax are necessarily brighter than those
|> who invented, say, Python's syntax?
They were certainly working in a different context. I don't know
Python, so I can't say, but from the little you've shown, my impression
is that it is something that works well for quick hacks, but doesn't
scale well.
|> > Those features which have passed through to modern languages have
|> > done so for a reason.
|> I honestly wonder what that reason is.
They work.
|> > On Thu, 27 May 2004 04:36:24 +0100, C# Learner <csharp@learner.here>
|> > wrote:
|> [...]
|> > Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that you don't have
|> > a deep enough understanding of the C language, and indeed of
|> > programming languages in general, to appreciate the reasons for
|> > the syntax features you're commenting on.
|> I believe that I appreciate the reasons for these features. What I'm
|> saying is that I think that there are better (in terms of allowing
|> the user of the language to write readable code) alternatives that
|> could have been implemented instead.
|> > Take your original example of eliminating the deli meters around
|> > the conditional in an if statement. Think about what this would
|> > mean for compound conditions. Combine that with the Python-style
|> > blocking and then think about an if statement which tests for
|> > several conditions, requiring more than one line to write.
|> a) Valid C syntax:
|> if (foo &&
|> bar) {
|> foobar();
|> }
|> b) Similar code to the above but using my suggested syntax changes:
|> if foo &&
|> bar:
|> foobar();
|> Why wouldn't (b) be feasible here?
|> Everything from 'if' to ':' is considered the condition.
Even if there is a ?: operator in the conditional expression?
|> After the newline after ':', whitespace is required to form a code
|> block.
Let's see, you want to overload on whitespace?
|> > As you study and understand the language, you'll find that it's
|> > all nicely consistent, and that there are good reasons for most of
|> > the features which seem odd to you.
|> The only way in which they seem odd to me is that they make code
|> much less readable than it could be, in my opinion.
Things like C's declaration syntax make code less readable. But you
didn't mention that. The preprocessor can be really effective in making
code less readable too, but you didn't mention that either. And of
course, all those funny characters really made code less readable back
in the days when I had to work with an ISO 646 terminal -- in the German
variant.
But you seem to be attacking areas where C basically has no serious
problems. I personally prefer something like:
if expr then
stmt_list
else
stmt_list
endif
but the alternative used by C is pretty acceptable too. (And my
preference may have been conditioned by the ISO 646 terminals above.
Things like:
if ( expr ) ä
stmt_list
ü else ä
stmt_list
ü
are not particularly readable.)
|> Okay, if you don't agree with the 'if'..':' idea, then how about
|> changing the parentheses required for test conditions for a
|> different pair of characters? An ideal pair would be a pair that
|> isn't used elsewhere in the language, for readability's sake.
|> > One of the characteristics of C is terseness, and extra parens
|> > aren't required by the language for no reason.
|> My point is that a different construct could be substituted in each
|> case.
|> > Also, think about the fact that language inventors and
|> > implementers are, by and large, a pretty bright bunch. In general,
|> > they probably have more and wider experience in the field than you
|> > do, and some of them might even be as smart ;-)
Let's not get carried away. Language designers don't work in a vacuum,
and C is like it is for a variety of historical reasons.
|> So those who invented C's syntax are necessarily brighter than those
|> who invented, say, Python's syntax?
They were certainly working in a different context. I don't know
Python, so I can't say, but from the little you've shown, my impression
is that it is something that works well for quick hacks, but doesn't
scale well.
|> > Those features which have passed through to modern languages have
|> > done so for a reason.
|> I honestly wonder what that reason is.
They work.
J
James Kanze
(e-mail address removed) (Dan Pop) writes:
|> In <c96ht9$4ej$2@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> Joona I Palaste
|> >Mark McIntyre <markmcintyre@spamcop.net> scribbled the following:
|> >> Gonads. This is nothing more than a style thing. French people
|> >> put two spaces after a full stop. English people don't. Same
|> >> idea.
|> >I've seen plenty of English-speakers (at least USAns) write two
|> >spaces atfer a full stop.
|> It has nothing to do with the language. It's a common (albeit not
|> universal) typographic convention to leave more space after the
|> punctuation sign terminating a sentence then after punctuation signs
|> inside a sentence.
It is a common (albeit not universal) typographical convention in the
anglosaxon world. Look at a book printed in France or Germany.
Correctly typeset French uses three different spaces :
une espace fine insécable : about a fourth of a quad, no line break
allowed.
une espace mots insécable : about a third of a quad, no line break
allowed.
une espace justifiante : nominally about a third of a quad, but can be
stretched or shrunk, allows a line break.
Nothing larger for the end of a sentence.
|> Examine a few printed books carefully and you may notice it (it's
|> not twice as much, so it's not immediately obvious).
|> The only way to follow this convention in a plain text document is
|> by using two spaces instead of one. This is what I'm consistently
|> doing, no matter in which of the three languages I'm familiar with
|> I'm writing.
Then you're probably doing it wrong in two of them. Different
linguistic communities have different conventions. A larger space after
a sentence is definitly wrong in French or German, and I think it is
wrong in Italian. On the other hand, it would generally be considered
poor typesetting in English not to use it, although how much extra space
is debattable, and if the difference is small enough, the average reader
might miss it.
|> >Now the French, they put a space before an exclamation or question
|> >mark. Like this: "Regardez moi ! Je suis français !". What's
|> >with that, then?
|> Yet another bogus generalisation coming from Joona. Quoting from a
|> post from a French mailing list:
|> ton enfant ? quel age?
|>
Doubtlessly a typo. Or simply incorrect use.
On the other hand, correct typographical use here is an espace fine
insécable, not a full space. Personally, I find the difference
between an espace fine and an espace mots pretty small, and when using a
fixed width font, use a normal espace for both. I know people, however,
who insist on the difference, and drop the espace fine, rather than use
a full space. (They're the exceptions, I think, but I've not done a
statistical analysis to prove it.)
In C, I've noticed that it is immediately obvious when a French speaker
has written the code, even if the comments are in English -- there's a
space in front of the : and the ;, which is never present in code
written by anyone else.
|> In <c96ht9$4ej$2@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> Joona I Palaste
|> >Mark McIntyre <markmcintyre@spamcop.net> scribbled the following:
|> >> Gonads. This is nothing more than a style thing. French people
|> >> put two spaces after a full stop. English people don't. Same
|> >> idea.
|> >I've seen plenty of English-speakers (at least USAns) write two
|> >spaces atfer a full stop.
|> It has nothing to do with the language. It's a common (albeit not
|> universal) typographic convention to leave more space after the
|> punctuation sign terminating a sentence then after punctuation signs
|> inside a sentence.
It is a common (albeit not universal) typographical convention in the
anglosaxon world. Look at a book printed in France or Germany.
Correctly typeset French uses three different spaces :
une espace fine insécable : about a fourth of a quad, no line break
allowed.
une espace mots insécable : about a third of a quad, no line break
allowed.
une espace justifiante : nominally about a third of a quad, but can be
stretched or shrunk, allows a line break.
Nothing larger for the end of a sentence.
|> Examine a few printed books carefully and you may notice it (it's
|> not twice as much, so it's not immediately obvious).
|> The only way to follow this convention in a plain text document is
|> by using two spaces instead of one. This is what I'm consistently
|> doing, no matter in which of the three languages I'm familiar with
|> I'm writing.
Then you're probably doing it wrong in two of them. Different
linguistic communities have different conventions. A larger space after
a sentence is definitly wrong in French or German, and I think it is
wrong in Italian. On the other hand, it would generally be considered
poor typesetting in English not to use it, although how much extra space
is debattable, and if the difference is small enough, the average reader
might miss it.
|> >Now the French, they put a space before an exclamation or question
|> >mark. Like this: "Regardez moi ! Je suis français !". What's
|> >with that, then?
|> Yet another bogus generalisation coming from Joona. Quoting from a
|> post from a French mailing list:
|> ton enfant ? quel age?
|>
Doubtlessly a typo. Or simply incorrect use.
On the other hand, correct typographical use here is an espace fine
insécable, not a full space. Personally, I find the difference
between an espace fine and an espace mots pretty small, and when using a
fixed width font, use a normal espace for both. I know people, however,
who insist on the difference, and drop the espace fine, rather than use
a full space. (They're the exceptions, I think, but I've not done a
statistical analysis to prove it.)
In C, I've noticed that it is immediately obvious when a French speaker
has written the code, even if the comments are in English -- there's a
space in front of the : and the ;, which is never present in code
written by anyone else.
M
Mark McIntyre
The second is a typo. I work for a french bank, and the vast majority of
french expats use spaces before and after emphatic punctuation. Only the
anglicised french omit the space.
Remind me what this has to do with C....
V
Viktor Lofgren
That is _very_ bad code. What if Parse, Process or GetInput fails,In comp.lang.c C# Learner said:
how would you know what hit you?
Instead,
void Foo(void)
{
type_t a;
if(!(a=get_input()))
puts("GetInput died");
if(!(a=process(a)))
puts("process died");
if(!(a=parse(parse())
puts("Parse died");
if(foobar(a)
do_something();
}
This is why: it would not be consistant with the C code-style. The
style is in fact is very obvious when properly idented and highligthed,
I don't like the idea of having indentation as a part of the syntax,
very hard to write longer code on 80x25 terminals :-(
Programming languages are not meant to be easy to read.
If you want easy-to-read, comment your code.
Here's why: It works and is perfectly balanced between levels. It is not
gibberish like LISP or Assembly (no offense, but it is kinda hard to see what
(+ 2 (* 8 (expt 25 (/ 5 2)))) does). And you still consistent (unlike BASIC)
and doesent require you to write a smaller novel (unlike COBOL) to get your
app to do something. Python may be an OK language, but it still doesent
have the maturity of C.
C
CBFalconer
Viktor said:
That is still foul and faulty code. Assuming there is an error
value 0, try:
void Foo(void)
{
type_t a;
if (!(a = get_input())) puts("GetInput died");
else if (!(a = process(a))) puts("process died");
else if (!(a = parse(a()) puts("Parse died");
else if (foobar(a) do_something();
/* else donothing */
}
If there is no such error value, the original is much clearer.
A
Arthur J. O'Dwyer
<on-topic for once> This is the general argument in favor of
writing fail-immune functions. For example, if 'GetInput' fails
it will (let's say) return NULL. Now, 'Process' knows that it
will be very tempting for the client to write 'Process(GetInput())';
thus, 'Process' codes as follows:
void *Process(const void *input)
{
if (input == NULL) return NULL;
[...]
}
Now 'Process' can handle anything 'GetInput' throws at it, and it
can do it in a reasonable manner. Apply the same solution to
'Parse' and 'FooBar'. Now the client can safely write
if (FooBar(Parse(Process(GetInput())))
DoSomething();
else
/* Something went wrong in one of those four functions */
;
This is a nice idiom to learn and use; unfortunately, the C
standard library doesn't use it in most places. Especially in
'strcpy' it would be convenient, so that
#define stdup(s) (strcpy(malloc(strlen(s)+1), (s)))
wouldn't exhibit undefined behavior if 'malloc' were to fail,
but sensibly return NULL.
[Not that I'm advocating a change to 'strcpy'; just pointing
out one of the disadvantages of a model that *doesn't* use the
fail-immune handling shown above.]
The canonical solution applies here: If your lines are too long
to be read comfortably by the average human, you ought to be writing
shorter lines. And/or smaller functions with fewer levels of
indentation.
Don't be ridiculous! Languages are *by definition* meant to make
communication simpler. And until computers learn to talk properly,
that communication is only going to happen through reading. C's
syntax, like that of every (non-joke) language in existence, was
designed to make reading and writing as easy, pleasurable and
effective as possible. The fact that some people like to write
impenetrable C code is no stranger than that some people like to
write impenetrable English or French.
-Arthur
D
Dr Chaos
No, but the programmers who designed it didn't care about "n00bs";
their target audience was people who worked at Bell Labs. They were
all very very smart. And it was in the days where actually printing
programs and typing them in was physically expensive and difficult
(literal paper-oriented terminals and tty inputs). So severely
limiting characters was a desirable major goal then. It isn't now.
Profound anti-intellectualism among practitioners, and cargo-cult
imitation. This spurious idea being that "gee, C was popular; so why
don't we make our language with Cish syntax so we might be popular
too."
Yes, these things have been tested empirically (though that field
is woefully underfunded) and yes the answer comes back that other
syntaxes are less error prone.
In particular the Fortran 90 and Ada typical syntaxes come out on
top.
The answers are easy. But depressing.
M
Malcolm
Or maybe "C is popular so let's use a syntax that most programmers areDr Chaos said:
already familiar with".
Just as sensible as using English language keywords and function names,
because most programmers already know at least some English.
A
August Derleth
rand() works right. You are broken.
R
red floyd
Not true. You're living in the present. In the past, when punch card
input was the norm, indentation had a meaning. In particular, FORTRAN
IV required input to begin in column 7 (or was it 8?), with a '*' in
column 6(7) as continuation...
DISCLAIMER: It's been nigh onto 25 years since I've done FORTRAN IV.
My info on the specific columns may be incorrect.
C
C# Learner
[Note: I was unable to post a message to comp.lang.c (as specified in
the "Followup-To" header in your message) unless I also posted to
microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp. I'm not certain why. In any
case, I've restored that "Followup-To" header.]
Dr Chaos wrote:
I'm glad you understand.
the "Followup-To" header in your message) unless I also posted to
microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp. I'm not certain why. In any
case, I've restored that "Followup-To" header.]
Dr Chaos wrote:
I'm glad you understand.
I
I. Appel
August Derleth said:
Actually, rand() has some side-effects - changing the seeds of pseudo-random
generator.
So, such function is not pure-fuctional-programming-language-function.
I
I. Appel
August Derleth said:
Actually, rand() has some side-effects - changing the seeds of pseudo-random
generator.
So, such function is not pure-fuctional-programming-language-function.
I
I. Appel
Viktor Lofgren said:
To start understand such stuff you need to write code in LISP for a few
days, not more. After that it may become even _simpler_ to understand,
because it's not required to memorize order of precedence.
D
Dr Chaos
Malcolm said:
Actually I think that's can be a worse idea---suggesting something
that 'almost works' the same, but in fact is subtly different is quite
dangerous.
Like, in the USA you might want to give your buddy who's had too much
to drink "a ride" home, but if you try offer that to your mates in
Sydney (as opposed to a "lift") you're likely to get socked. At least
in most straight bars.
It is not as sensible, especially when other forms are tested to be
better.
I believe natural language is an different situation because human
brains have specific circuits for it, and not specifically programming
languages.
To some degree (but not completely) good syntaxes are those which can
use the low-level processing of brains and natural langauges to suggest
the correct semantics "without thinking", or at least the conscious
perception thereof.
For instance, Lisp has practically no syntax, but that doesn't make
it easy---it offloads all understanding to the general conscious processing
of the cortex. And linguistic testing has shown that humans do not
have that deep a mental stack.
So despite the fact that from a purely theoretical perspective, Lisp
programs should be very easy to understand, they aren't, and
programming languages with more redundant and full syntaxes seem to be
generally preferred. Lisp has advantages that can outweigh
its disadvantages, but non-ergonomic syntax is a disadvantage.
(Smalltalk may share some of this as well). Lisp is a bad syntax
but it can be worth it. I don't think C-derived syntaxes are.
Besides, how many former Visual Basic programmers were really long-time
"regular" BASIC programmers? Not that large a fraction.
D
Dr Chaos
Arthur J. O'Dwyer said:
I don't know about C, but it may have been a holdover from Fortran,
where it does matter:
! fortran
if (condition = something) then
because
if condition = something
can be also
ifcondition = something
an assignment.
In C I don't see the issue, I admit.
O
ozbear
Column 6 was for the continuation. Your code had to fit in columns
7 through 72. 73 through 80 was for a card sequence number, and
ignored by the compiler, IIRC.
Cobol also (originally) used column-positional syntax, Area A,
Area B, and so on.
Columns 1 through 6 (or 7) was for sequence numbers, followed by
Area A for paragraph names, and Area B for code, but its been a long
time.
At any rate, Dan is incorrect.
Oz