Frank Carver's Punch Barrel

Comments (1) left to “Orthogonality”

1. Steve wrote:

   He reckons that Pascal/Delphi’s semicolon parsing doesn’t act consistently when composed within a surrounding statement. But the code he complains about isn’t within a surrounding statement – it is part of (not within) the statement. Let’s look at the Java equivalent:

   public static void main (String[] s) {
   if (true) System.out.println(“true”);
   else System.out.println(“not true”);
   }

   Suddenly, outside of any statement, an “else” just jumps into being! He says this is now more “orthogonal”. So I should be able to remove the “if”, making

   public static void main (String[] s) {
   //if (true) System.out.println(“true”);
   else System.out.println(“not true”);
   }

   which is nonsense, of course. I think Niklaus Wirth thought hard before going the way he did. The remarks on VB are right, though – and Java has its problems too.

   Posted on 20-Aug-08 at 2:37 pm | Permalink

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