From: Ralph Mason <ralph.mason@...>
Date: 2004-01-09T11:32:43+09:00
Subject: Re: block delimiting

Tim Hunter wrote:

>On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 09:44:33 +0900, Ralph Mason wrote:
>  
>
>>I am sure you could do something like
>>
>>require 'make_me_like_python'
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>Back in 1985 the company I work for decided to rewrite its entire PL/I
>code base in the then-new "C" programming language. PL/I, if you're not
>familiar with it, uses DO and END keywords to delimit blocks.
>
>The programmers didn't like C's new-fangled brace-delimited blocks, so
>they all created little header files with two macros:
>
>#define DO {
>#define END }
>
>and started coding
>
>if (x > 0) DO
>  /* stuff */
>END
>
>and were happy. For about a month, after which they collectively said
>"screw it, you can't make C into PL/I no matter how much preprocessing you
>do", deleted the header files, and started using braces.
>
>  
>
I wish the reverse about Ruby, if I could change one thing it would be 
it's block structure so I could write

class Foo{

    def foo(x){
        #code
    }
}

{ x+=12; y=9 } if a > b

if x {
    do_this_and_that()
    z=z+1;
}

All the other languages I work with are really 'c' style, and ruby is 
kind of but not really.

Ralph