Why Does “=” Mean Assignment?

Re:Why Does “=” Mean Assignment? by kbp on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @06:01PM (#16805934)

In the original Smalltalk implementation, the character corresponding to _ in ASCII was a left facing arrow, which Smalltalk used for assignment at the time.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Does “=” Mean Assignment? by bogomipz on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @07:09AM (#16809872)

I'm not following. The corresponding ASCII code for _ is 96 no?

http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/extended-ascii-code/underline...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Does “=” Mean Assignment? by tom_mellior on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @07:41AM (#16810112)

"In the original Parc Place image, the glyph of the underscore character (_) appeared as a left-facing arrow (like in the 1963 version of the ASCII code). Smalltalk originally accepted this left-arrow as the only assignment operator. Some modern code still contains what appear to be underscores acting as assignments, hearkening back to this original usage. Most modern Smalltalk implementations accept either the underscore or the colon-equals syntax."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#Assignment

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Does “=” Mean Assignment? by kps on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @10:28AM (#16811389)

Pre-1967 ASCII had slightly different printable characters and somewhat different control characters. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Does “=” Mean Assignment? by classichasclass on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @01:34AM (#16808329)

And now you know where the left-arrow on Commodore keyboards came from (same ASCII value): ASCII-1963, which became PETSCII instead of ASCII-1967.

[ Parent | on HN ]