[net.lang.pasca] THEN ELSE error

grunwald (02/19/83)

#R:iuvax:-31600:uiucdcs:27900004:000:799
uiucdcs!grunwald    Feb 18 17:23:00 1983


  Pardon my asking, but why do you have them write it that way to
begin with? I can point you to several references in Psychology which
demonstrate that people find it difficult to deal with logical negations in
a predicate. For example, not(a and b) it much easier to understand
than ( (not a) or (not b) ), even though the two are logically equivilent.

  The comprehension time of a statement phrased with a negation is 
demonstratably higher than one involving no negation.

As to why it doesn't work: The Berkley "pc" compiler has many errors, and
you've just found another. I tried it using a modified P4 compiler and
it worked just fine. I've come across several errors using "pc" -- I wonder
if they tested it with a validation suite or not.

					Dirk Grunwald
					University of Illinois

thomas (02/19/83)

Yeah, seems to me that it would be much better to write
	IF condition THEN action ELSE { Nothing };

=Spencer