Re: Declaration design preference: type or name first

"James Harris" <james.harris.1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:1193750749.866362.300320@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> As a matter of preference the declarations of some languages put the
> type before the name such as
>
>   int x = 2;
>
> where others put the variable name before the type as in
>
>   x: integer := 2;
>
> I can see advantages to each and would be interested to know what
> other language designers and programmers (i.e. the customers of
> language designers) prefer.
>
> Any offers?
>

it depends.

one major factor though, is that of context independent parsing.
having the type first almost invariably leads to context dependent
parsing.
with the name first, since you already know you are looking at a type, you

can be far more lax with the parsing (and maintain context independence).

example:
typedef int foo;

....
foo bar;    //only makes sense if the parser knows about foo

var bar: foo;
the parser can easily figure out what is going on, regardless of whether
or 
not it knows about foo.


but, of course, there are many other strong considerations (such as, for 
example, nearly all c-family languages putting the type name first, ...).

>
<snip>