In Pascal (at least in the version as intended by Go^H^HWirth), you are not very likely to make that mistake. Pascal uses = to compare two values, and := for assignment. So, you'd have to type an extra character (instead of leaving one off) to make this mistake, but even if you do:

    if a := b
    then begin ... end
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is a compile time error. Not really a problem. In Perl using assignment instead of comparison in a condition leads to a compile time warning. However, in C, the use of assignment instead of comparison is just find, and only some compilers will warn, if you turn on the appriate warnings. But when compiling C, it's much more common (and troublesome) to turn warnings on than in Perl.

Conclusing, when coding in Perl, and certainly in C, is more likely to make this mistake than when coding in Pascal.

Abigail