From: Jerry Coffin <jcoffin@...>
Date: 2008-01-31T12:49:56+09:00
Subject: Re: assert{ 2.0 } - a new kind of assertion

In article <ld2pf13xazee.5fvq1opyhe5z.dlg@40tude.net>, mailbox@dmitry-
kazakov.de says...

[ ... ]

> if assert I said, "if"! then assert I really mean "then"! or else!  ... 

Fortran did it first:

if if .eq. 1 then then = 2 else else = 3

is perfectly legitimate, since key words aren't reserved. Nicely enough, 
there's no reason you can't embed a space character into a variable name 
either, so something like:

do 10 i = 1.10

is perfectly legal too. Change it to:

do 10 i = 1,10

and it's a loop -- but with the decimal point instead of a comma, it's a 
simple assignment of the value 1.10 to a variable (that didn't have to 
be declared either) named 'do 10 i'!

Not to be outdone, the designers of PL/I decided that: 

x = y = 0;

should be legitimate and allowable -- but after executing it, x 
absolutely would NOT equal y!

-- 
    Later,
    Jerry.

The universe is a figment of its own imagination.