From: Szabolcs Szasz <sz@...>
Date: 2002-10-09T21:52:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Any Pascal's Influence on Ruby?

Well, to many, things like { ... } or begin ... end, = or := are 
are the least significant factors determining the look-and-feel 
of a language.

    #define do {
    #define begin {
    #define end }

in C, and I guess you will still not quite get the impression of 
not being in C, when you actually start playing with the code.

Sab


"Bill Tj" <billtj@glue.umd.edu> wrote in message news:f121f7e.0210090416.67462987@posting.google.com...
> Hi,
> 
> It seems so far that Ruby is usually attributed as taking the best
> features of several other languages, but Pascal is not one of them. 
> To me, coming from the Basic->Fortran->C/C++->Java->Tcl->Perl->Python
> background, the first time I saw Ruby, I said, "it looks like Pascal",
> because of the "end" keywords, and "begin" and "do" (although they are
> used differently in Ruby).  Now, with the proposed ":=" block
> operator, I think then Ruby really looks like Pascal.
> 
> Probably some other languages have syntax similar to Pascal, but at
> least to me Pascal is the "major" language that is closest to Ruby in
> syntax resemblance.  ("Major" because at least some time ago the first
> language taught in CS is Pascal; remember how Borland's Turbo Pascal
> got its popularity?)  So can anyone say about Pascal's influence on
> Ruby?  Maybe yes, not at all, or a little bit?
> 
> In addition, with ":=" as a new operator, is there any case where it
> will be confused with "the symbol of '='"?  (Does it look like that in
> Ruby, the punctuations begin to have too many different, unrelated
> meanings, just as the "static" keyword in C++?)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Bill