[E-Lang] Re: Distress (was: the return of `return')

[Bill Frantz]

At 12:50 PM -0700 6/20/01, Mark S. Miller wrote:
>E's answers seem to be like Algol 68's:
>
>At 12:10 PM Wednesday 6/20/01, Bill Frantz wrote:
>>Algol 68 supplied an answer to what control structures return:
>>
>>if (only) returned the value of the block or EMPTY (of type VOID) when the
>>block was not executed.
>
>I didn't understand this sentence.

In the case of a block that looks like:

{
  ...
  if (foo) {
     ...
     bar
  }
}

If foo is true, then the return value will be bar.  If foo is not true,
then the return value will be EMPTY, the only value of type VOID.


>My take: Our syntax is good enough, but we're dying on our missing features:
>reviving the comm system, switching to a modified Hydro, persistence,
>installation, compiler, auditors, user-defined PassByCopy, confinement,
>first-class abstraction of vats, asynch abstractions of I/O devices,
>debugging, distributed debugging, ENative, resource controls, CapIDL & EROS
>integration, Una, etc...
>
>I believe every single one of these issues is higher priority that further
>futzing around with the syntax.

Yup.


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