Path: ...!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!newsfeed.bofh.team!paganini.bofh.team!not-for-mail From: antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Use of { and } was Re: Back & Forth - Co-routines Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 01:38:57 -0000 (UTC) Organization: To protect and to server Message-ID: References: <2025Feb1.085049@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <8a9dfb4cf6ab113a0e97a7f3eb4ff4ceccbcd7b6@i2pn2.org> <2025Feb2.083926@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> Injection-Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 01:38:57 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: paganini.bofh.team; logging-data="2032143"; posting-host="WwiNTD3IIceGeoS5hCc4+A.user.paganini.bofh.team"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@bofh.team"; posting-account="9dIQLXBM7WM9KzA+yjdR4A"; User-Agent: tin/2.6.2-20221225 ("Pittyvaich") (Linux/6.1.0-9-amd64 (x86_64)) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.3 Bytes: 2467 Lines: 29 Anton Ertl wrote: > dxf writes: >>On 1/02/2025 11:14 pm, albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl wrote: >>> { } is used for comment in Pascal. >> >>That's interesting. When did that come in, and why, given the issues? > > Good question. My memory is only of (* *), but indeed Section 6.1.8 > of https://www.standardpascal.org/iso7185.pdf makes it clear that (* > and { can be used interchangeably, as well as *) and }. '{' and '}' are original Pascal comments. I do not think they have any issue beyond normal ones, that is inability to put '}' as part of a comment. Since comments were intended to be text and '}' is not used as normal part of text presumably inability to put '}' inside a comment was deemed as non-issue. Pascal was bases on ASCII, but IBM mainframes used EBCDIC which missed several useful ASCII characters, notably '{', '}', '[', '[', so Pascal implementations on IBM mainframes used alternate sequences. The alternative seqences were standarized together with originals. More generally, Wirth had rather rigid view how "good" program should look like and this view was enforced by Pascal compilers. Practical Pascals and later Extended Pascal were much more flexible. -- Waldek Hebisch