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James Giles wrote: > > >As soon as something is allowed, codes using it will exist. The ivory >tower attitude that "if you don't like feature x, don't use it" simply >*never* applies. As soon as you allow somthing like that, programs >abusing it will illegibly clutter up programming environments >everywhere. > > > This type of argument comes up often, and I'm often sympathetic. However, the problem is settling on the meaning of words like "abusing", "illegible", or "clutter". People have differing opinions. For example, I find programs with really long variable names with lots of underscore characters hard to read. Yet some students are taught in school to write code that way. I'm also generally cool to features that lead to poor execution speed, but others care little about efficiency because their programs are so small is makes no difference. In the end arguments about possible abuse usually lose out to arguments for possible use. Cheers, Bill -- Bill Long [log in to unmask] Fortran Technical Support & voice: 651-605-9024 Bioinformatics Software Development fax: 651-605-9142 Cray Inc., 1340 Mendota Heights Rd., Mendota Heights, MN, 55120