{"id":67,"date":"2009-02-04T08:49:36","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T06:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2009-02-04T08:49:36","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T06:49:36","slug":"assigning-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/04\/assigning-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Assigning stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

C-languages (and the like) make difference between the “assign” operator and the “comparison: equal” operator, as opposed to BASIC-languages where both share the same symbol. The other assign operators such as “+=<\/code>“, “-=<\/code>“, “*=<\/code>” and “\/=<\/code>“, in comparison, operate the same way in both languages – almost. In C-languages you can use assign operators pretty much anywhere within expressions because unlike in BASIC-languages, they return the value that was just assigned. That’s why you can use “a=b=c=1<\/code>” in C, and have all the three variables be assigned a value of 1. In BASIC-languages, where symbol “=<\/code>” defines the comparison operator, the same statement would equal C-expression of “a=(b==c==1)<\/code>” which would result in a boolean value of True<\/code> or False<\/code> to be assigned to variable a, depending on the values of b and c.<\/p>\n

The problem in BASIC-langages is that the compiler can’t tell whether the user wanted to express an assignment or a comparison with symbol “=<\/code>“, except for the first one in line; the rest are considered “comparison: equal”. BASIC-language parsers typically distinguish these two operators (that share the same symbol) by context: Are we expecting a value here or not. Therefore, by design, BASIC-language assign operators don’t return a value. Unfortunately, nor do any of the other assign operators: “+=<\/code>“, “-=<\/code>“, etc. because of consistency. Thus you can’t do loop auto increments like:<\/p>\n

While ((myVar += 1) < 10)<\/code><\/p>\n

In addition, since no value is evaluated by the assignment you can’t have the operation applied before\/after evaluation, like the “++<\/code>” and “--<\/code>” operators in C do (they can appear before or after a variable). In addition, the “--<\/code>” as prefix has also a double meaning: it can either be decrement before evaluation, or a double unary minus. Too much noice here. And that’s why those operators are missing from most BASIC-languages including VB.NET – and they won’t make it to CoolBasic either. You will be able to use “i += 1<\/code>“, but not within a value expression.<\/p>\n

In summary, these are the assign operators that will be implemented to CoolBasic V3:
\n\"=\", \"+=\", \"-=\", \"*=\", \"\/=\", \"<<=\"<\/code> and \">>=\"<\/code>.<\/p>\n

Edit 15.5.2009:<\/strong> Fixed typos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

C-languages (and the like) make difference between the “assign” operator and the “comparison: equal” operator, as opposed to BASIC-languages where both share the same symbol. The other assign operators such as “+=“, “-=“, “*=” and “\/=“, in comparison, operate the same way in both languages – almost. In C-languages you can use assign operators pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[5,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coolbasic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}