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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Recursion, Yo
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2024 00:13:36 -0000 (UTC)
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On Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:35:47 +0200, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

> It seems that's one of the fundamental differences between (low-level)
> languages that want to provide such technical factors explicit to the
> user and between languages that want to provide a higher abstraction.
> 
> Algol 60, Pascal, Simula 67 and Algol 60, Eiffel, etc. all took that
> approach.

Pascal had explicit pointers, though. Algol 68 and Ada did not.

> Languages syntactically derived from C or borrowed its syntax didn't.

Is there anything higher level than λ-calculus? In that notation, you 
always know whether you are referring to a function, or calling it.

Lisp makes function calls explicit in the same way. And no one would 
accuse it of “deriving from C”, given that it originated about a decade 
earlier.

> In Algol 68 everything is an expression. Statements are of type 'void'.
> You have, to keep it most simple here, for example,
> 
>   PROC f = INT : 3.1415
> 
>   PROC p = VOID : SKIP
> 
> There's nothing "thrown away" (as in C).

Yes there is--it’s called “voiding”.