elseif v. elsif ??

[Andrew Koenig]

"Different" would be more like the way bash does it: "elif"

Different?

Algol 68 spelled it that way in 1967, a spelling that the Bourne Shell
adopted in Unix in 1977.

 

[7stud 7stud]

Don't worry. They'll go away. The Wuby moto is break what works, rename

what's commonly known and add gotchas for fun.

I've seen it mentioned a couple of times--what the heck is wuby?

 

[Austin Ziegler]

I've seen it mentioned a couple of times--what the heck is wuby?

Jenda, at least this version of Jenda since others seem to recognise
said person as a positive influence in the Perl world at one point, is
a troll.

There's absolutely nothing of value in what Jenda says at this point.

-austin

 

[Lionel Bouton]

Austin Ziegler wrote the following on 07.03.2007 19:52 :

There's absolutely nothing of value in what Jenda says at this point.

I don't agree. Thunderbird may be able to learn how to automatically put
trolls in my Junk folder thanks to him/her. Please continue Jenda, this
is a high trafic list, I need some material

Lionel

 

[Jacob Fugal]

Jenda, at least this version of Jenda since others seem to recognise
said person as a positive influence in the Perl world at one point, is
a troll.

I agree with you insofar as "this version". I'm under the impression
that the posts are coming from someone posing as Jenda. It appears
that ruby-forum.com does send a activation email, but perhaps someone
hacked Jenda's email account or hacked the ruby-forum.com account post
activation. I just find it hard to believe that someone who'd been so
esteemed in the Perl community would stoop to the behavior we've seen
on this list, nor that they would refer to "Pearl"[1] in any forum...

Jacob Fugal

[1] ruby-talk:242290

 

[Rimantas Liubertas]

Yes, I guess you're right. I've never seen 'elsif' or 'elif' before.

But couldn't/shouldn't that be expected? So why not point that out in
"Ruby in 20 Minutes"? There isn't even anything about that in the
"Ruby from C and C++" page either, although instead of burying it in
there, I suggest it be deployed to the front lines.

I guess it will take a huge effort to document everything that may
be unfamiliar to one or another person coming from different background.
And "Ruby in 20 Minutes" will spend several hours just for those differences



Regards,
Rimantas

 

[Robert Dober]

Jenda, at least this version of Jenda since others seem to recognise
said person as a positive influence in the Perl world at one point, is
a troll.

I agree with you insofar as "this version". I'm under the impression
that the posts are coming from someone posing as Jenda. It appears
that ruby-forum.com does send a activation email, but perhaps someone
hacked Jenda's email account or hacked the ruby-forum.com account post
activation. I just find it hard to believe that someone who'd been so
esteemed in the Perl community would stoop to the behavior we've seen
on this list, nor that they would refer to "Pearl"[1] in any forum...

now that might be a stupid - although unlike - typo.
the behavior is strange though if the info concerning the person is
correct maybe I should search the archives.
Or maybe my first idea to contact CPAN is a good one too, imagine the
poor guy if his address is spoofed...

What'd you think?

Robert

Jacob Fugal

[1] ruby-talk:242290

 

[Alex Young]

Jenda, at least this version of Jenda since others seem to recognise
said person as a positive influence in the Perl world at one point, is
a troll.

I agree with you insofar as "this version". I'm under the impression
that the posts are coming from someone posing as Jenda. It appears
that ruby-forum.com does send a activation email, but perhaps someone
hacked Jenda's email account or hacked the ruby-forum.com account post
activation. I just find it hard to believe that someone who'd been so
esteemed in the Perl community would stoop to the behavior we've seen
on this list, nor that they would refer to "Pearl"[1] in any forum...

now that might be a stupid - although unlike - typo.
the behavior is strange though if the info concerning the person is
correct maybe I should search the archives.
Or maybe my first idea to contact CPAN is a good one too, imagine the
poor guy if his address is spoofed...

What'd you think?

Observe:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...uby&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

Not definitive, but certainly interesting. Also:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...uby&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

 

[Robert Dober]

Jenda, at least this version of Jenda since others seem to recognise
said person as a positive influence in the Perl world at one point, is
a troll.


I agree with you insofar as "this version". I'm under the impression
that the posts are coming from someone posing as Jenda. It appears
that ruby-forum.com does send a activation email, but perhaps someone
hacked Jenda's email account or hacked the ruby-forum.com account post
activation. I just find it hard to believe that someone who'd been so
esteemed in the Perl community would stoop to the behavior we've seen
on this list, nor that they would refer to "Pearl"[1] in any forum...

now that might be a stupid - although unlike - typo.
the behavior is strange though if the info concerning the person is
correct maybe I should search the archives.
Or maybe my first idea to contact CPAN is a good one too, imagine the
poor guy if his address is spoofed...

What'd you think?

Observe:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...uby&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

Not definitive, but certainly interesting. Also:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...uby&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

Oh boy I am a bad detective, I was about to innocent the guy.
You know I have not found a single reference to jenda <at> cpan <dot>
org he always uses is original address. http://search.cpan.org/~jenda/
He *always* signed his mails with a quote most of the time the same
from Terry Pratchett.
But I guess he just fell on his head, poor guy....

This does not concern me anymore.

Thx Alex I am grateful, was about to make a complete fool out of myself

Cheers
Robert

 

[Michael P. Soulier]

--nnmy4NBWOJNeUHwN
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Different?
=20
Algol 68 spelled it that way in 1967, a spelling that the Bourne Shell=20
adopted in Unix in 1977.

Not to mention that Ruby builds on Perl, which uses elsif.=20

Mike
--=20
Michael P. Soulier <[email protected]>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It
takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite
direction." --Albert Einstein

--nnmy4NBWOJNeUHwN
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFF73f2KGqCc1vIvggRAtdDAJ9nOkgLxZQCBbH/FfhBTlfayrG+AQCaA6lR
Bmrj1vrSAxFIArfNONDgekI=
=yo/w
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--nnmy4NBWOJNeUHwN--

 

[John Joyce]

Remember in those days, heck even in the 80's languages and tools
(programs) used the shortest names possible because computing power
and memory were at a premium so even saving one character made a
difference. Thus we get all these sick little names for Unix tools,
love them or hate them.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Chad you remind me of a dispute between fans of Domingo and Pavarotti when
a spanish music magazin explained that such discussions are futile and
nobody can judge at that level. This explaination took a whole article
just in concluding that Carreras was better than both...

So why would "else if" be better?

It's grammatically correct.

That was my point -- if you want to complain about one approach being
"more wrong" than another, the only one of the four that has any real
claim to correctness the others do not is the two-word version, because
it at least is grammatically correct English.

Of course, I don't much care. I'm perfectly willing to use elseif,
elsif, or elif, depending on the language. They all work. Bully for
them.

My point is not that everyone should start using "else if", but that
complaining that "elsif" is somehow "wronger" than "elseif" is silly.
You could as easily construct an argument the other way around. Watch
this:

elseif is more correct because "else" has an E in it!

elsif is more correct because it lends to correct pronunciation, while
elseif looks like it should be pronounced "ell-safe"!

Both are silly, all things considered. Both approaches are "incorrect"
by the grammatical rules of English.

Of course, in Ruby and Perl "elsif" is grammatically correct, and in VB
"elseif" is grammatically correct, while in Python and bash "elif" is
grammatically correct. These are not English. They're bash, Perl,
Python, Ruby, and Visual Basic, respectively. So, really, none of them
are incorrect.

Someone remind me, by the way, what non-MS languages use "elseif". I
know there are others, but I'm drawing a blank. Surely there must be
some language outside of Microsoft's miniature little ecosystem that use
elseif.

Oh, I just remembered PHP. Well, there you go. VB and PHP. Now all
three versions have two languages associated with them in this email.

I wonder if it's indicative of something fundamental that the two
languages out of the six that I'd be least likely to choose for serious,
large-scale development are the two languages that came to mind for
"elseif" examples. It's probably only indicative of my taste, I guess.

 

[Chad Perrin]

[ ... ]

Technically speaking, "elseif", "elsif", and "elif" are equally "wrong".
To do it right, you'd have to make it "else if".

Chad you remind me of a dispute between fans of Domingo and Pavarotti when
a spanish music magazin explained that such discussions are futile and
nobody can judge at that level. This explaination took a whole article
just in concluding that Carreras was better than both...

So why would "else if" be better?

You're all wrong. The best is indisputably this:

si ... , entonces
...
si no y si ... , entonces
...
si no y si ... , entonces
...
si no,
...
el fin

Maybe we should start using Japanese, particularly for Ruby.
Unfortunately, while I know enough nihongo to say "yes" and "no", I
don't know enough for "if" and "else".

 

[Chad Perrin]

Note the difference between

z = if x < y
-1
else if x == y
0
else if x < y
1
end
end
end

and

z = if x < y
-1
elsif x == y
0
elsif x < y
1
end

Whitespace isn't significant. No need to make it ugly like that.

. . though I understand your point -- that it's logically nested.
Then again, that's kinda what's happening anyway -- you're nesting "if"
inside "else". The use if elsif is just a linguistic convention that
some people find more helpful for understanding what's going on.

I suspect (though I don't know for sure, since I've never fully specced
out a language and implemented it) that using "else if" would even be
easier for the implementation, since there's one fewer keyword involved.
You'd just have to be sure to allow a "hidden" end keyword effect when
another else appears without an explicit end keyword.

 

[Chad Perrin]

No.
Programming languages are, like all languages, arbitrary symbolic
sets based on some sort of logical meaning.
In this case, someone else's (els') logic.
Like human languages, it does little good to complain about idioms or
grammar, just use it.
Life is much easier then. Every programming language has differences,
sometimes small subtle ones. The small subtle things are what make C
and C++ difficult to debug. This is why we have tools like colored
text editors and lexical analyzers and debuggers. Arguably, a
computer language should be more like a human language, but that too
is a bad idea. Human language is very implicit, contextual, and
fuzzy. When you are really dealing with 1s and 0s you can't be so fuzzy.

I mostly agree -- except that complaints about syntax and the like that,
if addressed, would provide some measurable benefit for programmers
without notable detriment are certainly worth discussion. I just don't
think "elseif" vs. "elsif" meets such criteria for dicussion.

 

[Chad Perrin]

I've seen it mentioned a couple of times--what the heck is wuby?

It's a sarcastic, trollish way of saying "Ruby" if you're trying to
convey a sense that it is childish. The only person I've ever seen use
that spelling is "Jenda", and it's already getting old. If you're going
to choose to avoid Ruby, please don't do so because of what a troll
said.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Austin Ziegler wrote the following on 07.03.2007 19:52 :

I don't agree. Thunderbird may be able to learn how to automatically put
trolls in my Junk folder thanks to him/her. Please continue Jenda, this
is a high trafic list, I need some material

Ahh, the silver lining.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Jenda, at least this version of Jenda since others seem to recognise
said person as a positive influence in the Perl world at one point, is
a troll.


I agree with you insofar as "this version". I'm under the impression
that the posts are coming from someone posing as Jenda. It appears
that ruby-forum.com does send a activation email, but perhaps someone
hacked Jenda's email account or hacked the ruby-forum.com account post
activation. I just find it hard to believe that someone who'd been so
esteemed in the Perl community would stoop to the behavior we've seen
on this list, nor that they would refer to "Pearl"[1] in any forum...

now that might be a stupid - although unlike - typo.
the behavior is strange though if the info concerning the person is
correct maybe I should search the archives.
Or maybe my first idea to contact CPAN is a good one too, imagine the
poor guy if his address is spoofed...

What'd you think?

Observe:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...uby&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

Not definitive, but certainly interesting. Also:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...uby&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

That almost makes me embarrassed to be a Perl hacker on ruby-talk.

We're not all like that. In fact, that's a distinct rarity. So sad
that it's in someone well known that you get to see this nonsense.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Different?

Algol 68 spelled it that way in 1967, a spelling that the Bourne Shell
adopted in Unix in 1977.

I was being slightly facetious. I really don't see anything
particularly wrong with any of these variations that have been discussed
here.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Hi,

In message "Re: elseif v. elsif ??"

| elseif is more correct because "else" has an E in it!
|
| elsif is more correct because it lends to correct pronunciation, while
| elseif looks like it should be pronounced "ell-safe"!
|
|Both are silly, all things considered. Both approaches are "incorrect"
|by the grammatical rules of English.

Correct or not, I chose 'elsif' as the shortest correct pronounceable
word for 'else if'.

. . and I'm perfectly happy with that choice. I'm sure I'd be happy
with the choice of "elseif", as well, except that I'd be slightly more
likely to introduce typos since I use elsif in Perl a lot more often
than I use elseif in PHP.