Language mavens: Is there a programming with "if then else ENDIF" syntax?

[Adrian Cherry]

Steve Ferg <steve.ferg.bitbucket at gmail.com> wrote in
news:ff92db5b-9cb0-4a72-b339-2c5ac02fbad0 at p36g2000vbn.googlegro
ups.com: 

> This is a question for the language mavens that I know hang
> out here. It is not Python related, except that recent
> comparisons of Python to Google's new Go language brought it
> to mind. 
> 
> NOTE that this is *not* a suggestion to change Python.  I
> like Python just the way it is.  I'm just curious about
> language design. 
> 
> For a long time I've wondered why languages still use blocks
> (delimited by do/end, begin/end, { } , etc.) in ifThenElse
> statements. 
> 
> I've often thought that a language with this kind of
> block-free syntax would be nice and intuitive:
> 
>     if <condition> then
>         do stuff
>     elif <condition> then
>         do stuff
>     else
>         do stuff
>     endif
> 
> Note that you do not need block delimiters.
> 
> Obviously, you could make a more Pythonesque syntax by using
> a colon rather then "then" for the condition terminator. 
> You could make it more PL/I-like by using "do", etc.
> 
> You can write shell scripts using if ... fi, but other than
> that I don't recall a language with this kind of syntax.
> 
> Does anybody know a language with this kind of syntax for
> ifThenElseEndif?
> 
> Is there any particular reason why this might be a *bad*
> language- design idea?

I believe MATLAB has similar if syntax - please correct me if I'm 
wrong.

From

http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/if.html

"The if function can be used alone or with the else and elseif 
functions. When using elseif and/or else within an if statement, 
the general form of the statement is"

if expression1
    statements1
elseif expression2
    statements2
else
    statements3
end


Adrian