Comment by kps
6 days ago
FORTRAN also had single-expression function definitions, e.g.
ARGF(X, Y, Z) = (D/E) * Z+ X** F+ Y/G
Naturally this is syntactically identical to an array element assignment, which is one of the many things that made compiling FORTRAN so much fun.
Yeah, that's also almost exactly the same as the Algol-58 syntax for defining such functions. And BASIC, except you had to say
and the function name had to start with FN.
s/had/has/
In the flang-new compiler, which builds a parse tree for the whole source file before processing any declarations, it was necessary to parse such things as statement functions initially so that further specification statements could follow them. Later, if it turns out that the function name is an array or regular function returning a pointer, the parse tree gets patched up in place and the statement becomes the first executable statement.
Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Fortran doesn't exist any more. I compiled Fortran on my cellphone as recently as last year.
For those who like that sort of thing, Fortran is exactly the sort of thing that they like.