[net.lang] indentation for statement grouping, and will the real B please stand up!

jsgray@watrose.UUCP (Jan Gray) (09/30/85)

In article <6630@boring.UUCP> guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) writes:
>In article <205@graffiti.UUCP> peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>Then you could indicate compound and continued statements by indentation:
>> [long example]
>>Any programming languages actually do this, by the way?
>
>Yes.  B, for instance(*).  A small example of a B program to give you the
>taste of it:
.
.
.
>(*) No relation with the predecessor of C.
>
>Disclaimer: I work on the design and implementation of B and thus am not
>unbiased.  On the other hand, we don't earn a cent by selling it (yet).

B, "the predecessor of C" still exists and is used here at the University
of Waterloo for systems programming on a Honeywell DPS8, and, I expect,
on all Honeywells running GCOS.


Years ago I wrote a preprocessor for B which grouped statements by indentation,
by inserting '{'s and '}'s when indentation changed levels.  The only problem
with this simple technique was you had to be very careful folding lines of code.

Jan Gray   (jsgray@watrose)   University of Waterloo   (519)-885-1211 x3870