I suppose it is going to boil down to a matter of "taste".
Old AT&T pic treated
line from 1,1 then up 1
exactly the same as
line from 1,1 up 1
As I read pic documentation, these *should* behave differently; the
former should plot two line segments, the latter only one. If AT&T
pic produces identical results in both cases, then IMO it doesn't
behave as documented, so could be considered broken.
Yes, AT&T is broken here, I think. In CSTR 116, section 8 (`Lines and
Splines'), it is explicitly written:
The word `then' separates components of the path.
And examples are given like that:
line right 1 then down .5 left 1 then right 1
which makes a zig-zag line having three components. So it is clear
that `components' are visible parts of the line, not syntactical
parts. However, examples using the `from' keyword are given only for
arcs, so I assume that during development of pic this particular case
slipped through the grammar.
Brian, could you comment, please?
Werner