From: bc@freeuk.com   
      
   On 02/12/2025 13:15, Janis Papanagnou wrote:   
   > On 2025-12-02 13:21:32, bart wrote:   
   >> So:   
   >>   
   >>    if .. then begin ... end else begin ... end   
   >>   
   >> ... represents multiple statements.   
   >>   
   >> Even I would see braces in a more favourable light. I wonder why it   
   >> took some years for language designers to realise you could simply have:   
   >>   
   >>    if .. then ... else ... end   
   >   
   > You're misrepresenting history, or at least convey the impression   
   > that this would be something new and previously obscure,   
      
   I'm not misrepresenting anything at all. For example Algol60 needed   
   begin-end if you wanted several statements in a block; Algol68 made that   
   optional.   
      
   There are 'some years' between them.   
      
   > or that   
   > language designers would not know all these syntactical options.   
   >   
   > You had the  if .. then ... else ... fi  syntax as paragon in the   
   > back then by language experts well known Algol 68 language, it's   
   > been inherited (also in comparable forms), e.g. by the common Unix   
   > shell, also in "more recent" languages (with "end") in Eiffel, for   
   > example.   
      
   It's everywhere now with 'end'-based languages: Ada, modern Fortran,   
   Lua, Ruby. Even Wirth adopted it Modula-2.   
      
      
   > The huge impact of the "C" language syntax might have made that   
   > less visible in the modern, contemporary (used, hyped) languages.   
   > But there's really nothing to "realize" by language designers, I'm   
   > sure.   
      
   Language designers were hung up on the concept of allowing only a single   
   statement for each branch of a structured statement like 'if' or the   
   body of a loop, or of a function. I guess it made their grammars simpler.   
      
   This applies to C too. So if someone wanted multiple statements, then   
   they need to use a special 'compound statement' which needed enclosure:   
      
        {s1; s2; s3;}   
        begin s1; s2; s3 end   
      
   This now counts as single statement to satisfy the requirement. (Note C   
   requires a compound statement for a function body, even if it is just   
   one statement.)   
      
   So, what they had to realise was they could simply allow N statements   
   instead of 1, in such contexts. The only problem then was in delimiting   
   that sequence.   
      
   Some syntaxes could use a token like 'end' on the final block of a   
   structured statement (previous ones being delimited by then ... else for   
   example), but that didn't work for braces, so C-like syntaxes are stuck   
   with the notion of a single statement per branch.   
      
   Some others now use significant white space, a more fragile approach.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)