On 16 Aug 1999 08:47:27 GMT, Aaron Sloman See text for reply address wrote:
>richard@starburst.demon.co.uk (Richard Wendland) wrote:
>> "Andy Glew" <glew@cs.wisc.edu> writes:
>> >a :=: b is cool,
>> >but I think that a,b := b,a
>> >or a := b, b := a
>> > (where , is the "parallel" separator for unordered code)
>> >is more general, and extends to arbitrary permutations:
It also works for tuple (or list) packing and unpacking, which is Python's
excuse for allowing the same meaning :) for a,b:=b,a.
>> POP-2 had this in 1968. Was this the first language with this feature?
>Not if forth came first?
Kind of. There were primitive Forths around, but they didn't achieve
consciousness until a little later (source: www.forth.com, history pages).
So to speak :).
They didn't have variable flipping, but rather an open stack.
>> I've always been glad POP-2 was my first programming language.
I'm learning Lisp and Pop-11 at the same time. The cool thing is that
Poplog includes a fairly complete Common Lisp implementation.
A pity it took me so long to start learning them.
>Aaron
--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
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