Matching elements of records

[Jouni Rynö]

Those, who have had exposure to C, at some point, might get to a habit
of writing if-statements like this (against all the instincts)

if {0 == TestVariable} {
  foo
}

Once looking long enough for mistakes like this

if {TestVariable = 0} {
  foo
}

one learns to change the coding style. Others may know better and change
to Erlang.

If I remember correctly, a recent linux-kernel trojan was implemented
with such a misuse of the if-statement, just to hide from a casual
reader.

regards
	Jouni

P.S Does the left-right rule work on the arabic etc. right to left
written language areas?

On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 16:35 +1300, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> variable on the left automatically ensures that the "heavy" component,
> the branching component, is on the right.
> 
> Somehow
>     f(X = {a,b,c,d})
> looks right, while
>     f({a,b,c,d} = X)
> looks as though "=" was a misprint for ",".
> 
> Until we have some experimental evidence about readability in Erlang,
> we'll have to put this down as a matter of taste, but there _is_ the
> evidence from natural language that variable on the left might be
> more readable, so it hardly makes "no sense" to recommend what we have
> reason to believe is more readable.
> 
-- 

  Jouni Rynö                            mailto://Jouni.Ryno@fmi.fi/
                                        http://www.geo.fmi.fi/~ryno/
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