C bites Dog! / project proposal

[Richard L. Klappal]

In article <2968 at sdcc3.UUCP> ee161bep at sdcc3.UUCP (Paul Van de Graaf{|stu) writes:
>I'm ready for something beyond C, and I don't mean C++ or Ada.  If no one
>obliges all just have to do as Jim says and write my own.
>
>Paul van de Graaf	sdcsvax!sdcc3!ee161bep		U. C. San Diego

I have been feeling similarly.  Have been thinking of trying to write
something somewhere between C and PL/I.

1)	Pointers are pointers, not pointers to ..
	(Loses pointer arith, has to be array addressing.  Use
	optimization to reduce common subexpressions to get rid of overhead.
2)	More complete output format control.
	column(n) capability (like F77 Tn, or BASIC TAB(n))

3)	string OPERATORS, not function calls.

4)	discard ++/-- notation.
	keep +=, -=, /=, etc

5)	then .. else .. end / do .. end / do n=1 to n [by nn] while (..)

6)	no assignment in conditionals.
	means duplicating statements, but less confusion about
	.. is he assigning, or did he mean ==, and not catch it.

7)	switch/case statement (or select ..when)

8)	BASED / DEFINED data in stead of unions:  (They sill give me a
	headache.)
10)	conversion functions instead of casts.  They get too unreadable
	too fast.

11)	exception/condition handling ala PL/I.

12)	no ternary operator (cond ? true : false)

13)	I/O defined in the language. Not added as an afterthought like 
	Pascal/C/etc.  Will support both stream and record I/O.  Auto
	indexing (ISAM?/B-TREE?/??)) avail.
These are the general specs off the top of my head, and will probably
generate more flames than called for, but I personnaly prefer the
clarity of PL/I to the terseness of C.