Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]
- by Wes Miller
More social curiosity than actual programming question...
(I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.)
Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends.
A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion.
Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons.
As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc.
Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y );
Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer.
Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go?
And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...)
I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading.
Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB.
Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?
