Re: Ambigous function call (or: my first ";" in Lua)

[Mark Meijer <meijer78@...>]

2009/2/20 David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>:
> Mark Meijer <meijer78@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Jokes aside regarding the sex of the inventor of Cobol and about
>> ending statements with a period.
>
> Close, but no cigar (sometimes a cigar is...).  Misogynist terminology
> would be "ending _sentences_ with a period".

Aw heck... I had that, and then "corrected" it to instead say statements...

Actually, statements are also constructs of natural languages, not
just programming languages. Admittedly I don't know as much about
punctuation and syntax structures in Cobol, but I suspect it does have
statements and not sentences. Unless "sentence" is specific Cobol
terminology, which then would probably mean "statement" in the context
of any other programming language.

Also, one wouldn't generally argue that women speak only one sentence
between periods. Furthermore, if a statement in natural language is a
sentence (or sequence of sentences) that asserts some factual truth,
or makes an argument for some point of view, then one statement per
period seems more likely ;-)

So, no cigar for me I guess, for misquoting whoever originally thought
of that joke. I still think my variant was more accurate...

Good thing I'm no misogynist!