Optional semi-colons
Herman Rubin
cik at l.cc.purdue.edu
Mon May 1 23:51:39 AEST 1989
In article <225800165 at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, mcdonald at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>
> >For example, the C preprocessor. Having a unique statement terminator frees
> >the programmer of worrying where newlines might show up after macro expansion.
>
> Really? What happens if macro expansion results in a string longer
> than 509 characters, or an expression several thousands of bytes long?
> I have had both of those happen. Serious worries result.
>
In C, there is already a situation in which semicolons are not used for
terminators, newlines are, and there is provision for multiple line statements.
This is in #defines, where semicolons frequently occur. It is necessary to
escape a newline to prevent termination. Why not do this in the language?
It handles the situation of multi-line statements without requiring a statement
termination character. One could still allow semicolons to end statements, so
existing code could be reasonably edited.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin at l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)
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