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From: "Stephen Fuld" <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: text in programming languages, Unicode in strings
Date: Mon, 20 May 2024 01:14:38 -0000 (UTC)
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MitchAlsup1 wrote:

> John Levine wrote:
> 
> > According to Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid>:
> > > > That may have been the idea, but I think the idea was wrong. 
> > > 
> > > I think few would disagree with both parts of that.  I certainly
> > > wouldn't.  But I give the designers some slack as, in the late
> > > 1950s, there was lettle knowledge about programming languages to
> > > go on.  Now, the mistake is obvious.
> 
> > COBOL is older than Fortran, and back in the day there were plenty
> > of people who were outraged at I=I+1 which is mathematically absurd
> > for the
> > physicicts and mathematicians who were Fortran's early users.  
> 
> > Algol gave us various kinds of := which were supposed to be better.
> 
> > > Yes, the COMPUTE statement.  i.e. COMPUTE I = I + 1 
> 
> > You could do that, but I think this is at least as clear:
> 
> >     ADD 1 TO PRODUCT-INDEX.
> 
> > Don't forget that while COBOL's control structures were quite weak,
> > its data structures still look pretty good.  Everything in a C or
> > C++ structure comes from COBOL by way of PL/I.
> 
> 
> Picture data structures ??


I'm not sure what you are saying here.  While Picture clauses are not
in C nor C++, John never cleamed they were.  His clain was that those
features that were included came from COBOL.  e.g. nested structs,
array of structs, structs of arrays, etc.

And I miss some equivalent of picture clauses in C every time I see,
including in this NG, a number consisting of a string of say 8 or 9 or
more digits without the every three digit separator character, which
sure makes reading such numbers easier.  :-(





-- 
 - Stephen Fuld 
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)