eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (01/05/89)
In article <9310@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes: >This (using expression forms) won't work too well in (full) C. The problem is >that pure expression-based languages (like LISP) tend to be typeless as well. >Having to return a specific data type severely limits the usefulness of making >control-flow constructs (if, switch, for, etc.) expression-oriented. To see that this is false, try a simple thought experiment. Imagine that you have modified your C compiler so that the language now has two new properties; 1. Every block contruct { <st1>; <st2>; .... <stn> ;} returns, as an assignable rvalue, the value of the nth statement <stn>. 2. The for, while, do, and case constructs return the value of the last block executed before termination; that is, the value of the last *statement* executed before termination. Voila! Expression-oriented C. Trivial to implement, and *incredibly* useful (if you've ever written LISP you know why). Look at what we could *drop* from the language -- the sequential-execution comma and ?: operators, for starters. If you're willing to break some old code, try thinking of function-argument comma as an aggregation operator...then consider what foo = {4, 5, 2} might mean for foo of type, say, (int [3]). First class vector arithmetic, anyone? Now think about the possibilities for natural expression of parallelism in expressions like {foofunc(), 66, p + q}. These are *my* impossible dreams for the future of C. Hey, Bjarne -- any chance you might want to include 1 and 2 above in some future C++ ;-)? -- Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews) Email: eric@snark.uu.net CompuServe: [72037,2306] Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718