Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: demars@netcom.com (Dennis D.)
Subject: Re: dot syntax confusion
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References: <9602031834.aa29300@ax433.mclink.it> <demars-1302962053390001@10.0.2.15> <4fuel0$sj8@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 05:39:12 GMT
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In article <4fuel0$sj8@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>, ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU
(Richard A. O'Keefe) wrote:

>demars@netcom.com (Dennis D.) writes:
>>I don't think the problem is the dot notation, but the decision to allow
>>"-" in indentifiers. ... But no infix languages I know of allow this.
>
>How soon they forget.
>COBOL.
>        MOVE 35-YEARS-OR-MORE TO STILL-GOING-STRONG.
>-- 
>Election time; but how to get Labour _out_ without letting Liberal _in_?
>Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.

Ah, but was COBOL originally an infix language? I believe the original
form of the language didn't use symbolic operators at all, rather than
say:

MONTHLY-PAYMENT = PRINCIPAL * MONTHLY-INTEREST

you'd have to say

MULTIPLY PRINCIPAL BY MONTHLY-INTEREST GIVING MONTHLY-PAYMENT

and only later did they add a "compute" keyword or something like that to
allow algegraic expressions. (I think, I'm a little shaky on history of
COBOL).

(Sorry, guess this doesn't have much to do with Dylan...)

- Dennis D.
