== vs =

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

In the early 70's I designed a language based on B, called IMP. It ran
on the Intel 8080 and GE 600 series, and cross compiled (in both
directions). After talking to a number of people about the readability
of the code, three changes were made in the language:
	= was replaced by := to avoid confusion
	== was replaced by = since assignment was different
	!= was replaced with <> like BASIC

I find it interesting that 15 years later = and == are still biting (or
byting) people and we are still living with it. Perhaps in the next (P)
language this will change.

Disclamer: this is historical fact, not opinion. I have no opinions from
April 1st to Memorial Day.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me