From: paul@... (Paul J. Sanchez)
Date: 2002-12-07T07:33:40+09:00
Subject: Re: elseif?

>>>>> "Kent" == Kent Dahl <kentda@stud.ntnu.no> writes:

    Kent> [...] But I'm not for the elseif alias, though. Keywords are
    Kent> sacred and should be kept to a minimum. If anything,
    Kent> howsabout dumping it all together and parse the combination
    Kent> "else if" specially?

I disagree with any proposal to remove "elsif" and replace it with
"elseif" - that would hose way too much work and way too many current
users.  I still like the idea of adding "elseif" as an alias, because
it doesn't change the status quo yet makes the language a little more
friendly to native English speakers.  I still believe what I said
several months ago: I think it's a human factors issue for native
speakers of English.  To me it's as jarring as reading through a
usenet post and seeing repeated use of "there" instead of "their".  I
can extract the meaning, and I could write like that too, but it takes
effort to do so and is more prone to error on my part.  If Ruby were
the only language I were using, I'd probably soon get used to it.
However, in reality I switch back and forth between Ruby and Java,
C/C++/Objective-C, and lately I've been playing with OCaml - all of
them, along with English, keep the "e" at the end of "els", which
makes Ruby's "elsif" a mild annoyance every time I bump into it.

I've programmed in well over a dozen languages in the last thirty
years, I can just suck it up and use "elsif" as I've been doing for
several months now.  It's not a make or break issue.  I also
understand that this is not a democracy, and whatever Matz decides is
the way it's going to be.  And that's a good thing, he's done a fine
job.  But that needn't keep me from voicing my opinion, and hoping my
plea falls on sympathetic ears.

--paul