HELP SEMICOLON Steven Hardy, March 1982
The semicolon, ;, is used to separate or terminate expressions or imperatives.
It may be used anywhere that a comma can be used EXCEPT between the arguments
of a procedure call. That is, instead of
foo(x; y; z)
write:
foo(x, y, z)
This appararently arbitrary restriction allows the compiler to recognize
missing closing round brackets more quickly. If the compiler sees
hd(tl(list) -> result;
it can tell from the semi-colon that a ')' is missing. But for this rule, the
error would not be noticed till much later.
See HELP
*COMMA - on the use of the comma in POP-11
*SYSWORDS - summary of system symbols, syntax words and datawordsAuthor: Steven Hardy, March 1982