Re: Declaration design preference: type or name first

On 31 Oct, 01:22, "cr88192" <cr88...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
....
> lots of special checks are done to deal with the various cases.
>
> for example:
> foo *bar(baz a)
> {
>     ...
>
> }

Agreed. C, of course, puts a name in the context in which it is used.
I'm keen to keep the type separate from the name for various reasons.

....

> > Didn't Dennis Ritchie of one of his colleagues design a language long
> > after C where he put the name first, then the type, thus reversing the
> > order used in C? If he changed to that form I wonder what the reason
> > was. Maybe long experience suggested that was a better way to go.....

I think the language I had heard about was Limbo

   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_programming_language>

but I was wrong about its author****p. It seems to have been designed
by three people including Rob Pike but not including Dennis Ritchie.

> when writing a C compiler, one finds that there are more than a few
hidden
> pitfals in the language (and it is not so simple of a piece of machinery
as
> it might at first seem...).

No kidding! Same with designing a language. There are FAR more issues
to consider than I was aware of. I don't mean the obvious ones you can
read about in books. I mean the background ones that come usually from
feature interraction and the more apparent ones trying to keep the
syntax sweet.

--
James