using indentation rather than braces

[Don Libes]

> Couldn't you write a small(?) filter which would let you write C
> without braces and fill them in for you from the indentation? It
> doesn't seem too difficult. (No I'm not offering to do it).

Someone here, upon being introduced to C, decided it was so ugly,
that he wrote a filter called "uglify" which allowed him to write
"beautiful code" which when translated by uglify looked like real C.

One of the things uglify did was to take statements without the
braces and fill them in from the indentation.  It did a variety of
other things that were cute.  One of the things I remember is that
you could put the args next to the formats in printf strings,
rather than having to count up the number of %'s you had seen to
tell which argument to look at.

The guy obviously had no idea of separation between lexical
scanning, parsing and functions.  He just knew what he liked and
didn't like.  I refused to criticize him, because some of the best
ideas are born that way.

If you want "uglify", call Tom Kramer (301) 921-2461.  I'm sure he
doesn't read his mail.

Don Libes           {seismo,umcp-cs}!nbs-amrf!libes