On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 11:28:43AM -1000, Jimen Ching wrote: > On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Tim Newsham wrote: > >I always found "continue" to be a lot more explicit in situations > >like this: > > > > while(*s++ = *t++) > > continue; > > > >the empty semi-colon being the least attractive alternative (did > >he really mean to leave the body empty? not to mention the greener > >programmer will easily overlook the semicolon). > > I'm curious, can you give an example of where someone forgot to type in a > statement, but remembered to type the semicolon? [...]
Getting back to my point in using those examples, the point was not that they are examples of good code, but that they are idioms of their respective language. This discussion re exactly what form is the best way to write a looped post-increment copy-thru-pointer in C makes the case - you need to understand the meaning and implication of the idiom to participate intelligently in the discussion, as well as to maintain others' programs or write programs maintainable by others. Likewise for the Perl example: to even know whether it's good or bad, one needs to know, for instance, that split (like many other functions) implicitly operates on the "$_" variable, that in certain contexts that variable is magically filled with the contents of the current input line, that a function which returns an array can be directly assigned to an array on the LHS of the assignment in which case it replaces its former contents, that extended regexes are normally (or often) written within //s, etc. Knowing the basic syntax of each language does not initially give you this. My goal for a language-oriented group would be to see it help new programmers rapidly bridge the gap between knowing some basic commands and writing the language like a "native" - definitely for Python, and if possible for some other languages like Ruby, Lisp, PHP, whatever. On initial organizational matters: Is there consensus for a Saturday vs. a weekday evening, at least for an initial meeting? -- Clifton -- Clifton Royston -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] President - I and I Computing * http://www.iandicomputing.com/ Custom programming, network design, systems and network consulting services