Piles of plusses (was Re: comma operator: keep away?)

[Paul Houtz]

mcdonald at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu /  7:24 am  Apr 28, 1989 /

I wrote:

>>   In FORTRAN it is STILL allowed to use variables that have not been 
>>declared.   This is a practise that should be eliminated from all serious
>>programming languages, due to the ease with which bugs can be created.

Doug wrotes:

>It is not a matter of "being still allowed" --it is that automatic
>generation of variable is the heart and soul of Fortran. Many,
>many supposedly "more advanced" languages such as Pascal and C
>STILL require you to declare all variables - just like assembly
>language. Fortran and Basic, apparently alone, have the computer
>do the work for you (in the most common cases) [although C 
>will in some cases allow you to do without declaring some things
>to be int, the most common being functions].

   I program in fortran too, and I have NEVER allowed Fortran to generate
variables for me.

   I like to think that there is such a thing as progress in the software
development industry.   The biggest step I have yet seen that I would 
categorize as forward, was the development of structured programming
techniques.   It is generally recognized that two of the cornerstones
of structured programming is the avoidance of "go to's" and the declaration
of all variables.   It seems to me that the industry generally recognizes
that allowing undeclared variables is a step backward for a compiler,
not a step forward.