Optional semi-colons

[Wietse Z. Venema]

In article <41117 at oliveb.olivetti.com> chase at Ozona.UUCP (David Chase) writes:
>
>  BCPL programs are written in free format. ... `end of line' has the 
>  effect of terminating a statement if syntactically this is possible.  
>
>This just makes the "why does C do it the other way" question more
>curious; the only explanation that comes to mind is that it makes it
>easier to write programs that generate programs (lex and yacc, e.g.).

For example, the C preprocessor. Having a unique statement terminator frees
the programmer of worrying where newlines might show up after macro expansion.
-- 
work:	wswietse at eutrc3.uucp	| Eindhoven University of Technology
work:	wswietse at heitue5.bitnet	| Mathematics and Computing Science
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