From: Bulat Ziganshin <bulatz@...>
Date: 2002-10-09T21:49:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Any Pascal's Influence on Ruby?

Hello Bill,

Wednesday, October 09, 2002, 4:31:37 PM, you wrote:

BT> got its popularity?)  So can anyone say about Pascal's influence on
BT> Ruby?  Maybe yes, not at all, or a little bit?

   algol -> pascal and algol-68 -> modula-2 -> eiffel -> ruby. it's a path of
   syntax-in-large of ruby. so you just know exact one cell of this chain
   :)  and syntax-in-small of ruby (operators) are derived most from
   C->Perl chain

   on the other side, most languages in the world called pascal-like
   (or algol-like), because these two languages set up very good
   syntax, which don't need to be improved

   and such things as "()" equal to "begin...end" and "all operators
   are expressions" is "sign of devil" of algol-68, so i think that
   matz knows this language

BT> In addition, with ":=" as a new operator, is there any case where it
BT> will be confused with "the symbol of '='"?  (Does it look like that in
BT> Ruby, the punctuations begin to have too many different, unrelated
BT> meanings, just as the "static" keyword in C++?)

yes, i see two problems - it's too small and this is reusing convenient
symbol for absolutely new purpose

-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:bulatz@integ.ru