Search                        Top                                  Index

HELP SEMICOLON                                      Steven Hardy, March 1982

The semicolon, ;, is used to separate or terminate expressions or imperatives.
It may be used anywhere that a comma can be used EXCEPT between the arguments
of a procedure call. That is, instead of

    foo(x; y; z)

write:

    foo(x, y, z)

This appararently arbitrary restriction allows the compiler to recognize
missing closing round brackets more quickly. If the compiler sees

    hd(tl(list) -> result;

it can tell from the semi-colon that a ')' is missing. But for this rule, the
error would not be noticed till much later.

See HELP
    *COMMA    - on the use of the comma in POP-11
    *SYSWORDS - summary of system symbols, syntax words and datawords