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Re: Reader option to permit brackets as parentheses
- To: guile@cygnus.com
- Subject: Re: Reader option to permit brackets as parentheses
- From: Chris Bitmead <cbitmead@ozemail.com.au>
- Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 13:32:57 +1000
- References: <qrrr9mu4tw7.fsf@elwha.cs.washington.edu> <3779AC8E.A5A1BA79@ozemail.com.au> <qrraeth3c92.fsf@elwha.cs.washington.edu> <377AC053.F3E9A1BB@ozemail.com.au> <qrrzp1h2fvx.fsf@elwha.cs.washington.edu> <199907010401.VAA21885@arathorn> <377B0CB8.A473C0D1@ozemail.com.au> <19990702125914.04762@localhost>
Telford Tendys wrote:
>
> > Is that what python is? Sounds like a _very_ bad idea to
> > have code
> > meaning depending on whitespace.
>
> Why? Whitespace is understandable, obvious, easy to edit,
> easy to align.
While I'm not aware of exactly what rules Python uses, I would imagine:
* The meaning of code could depend on what tab-spacing your editor uses.
I use tab spacing 4 and the code does X. You use tab spacing 8 so you
think the code does Y. Admittedly this may not often cause a problem,
but when it does - YOW! It could bring down your countries
telecommunications network (if they used python, which they wouldn't).
* With some cleverness you could probably fiddle with tabs and spaces to
maliciously make code do something different than you think.
* If you have to read some code written by someone with different tab
spacings at least it's possible to understand what's going on in other
languages, even if difficult.
* When you cut and paste code with various tools, most of them lose tab
spacing or otherwise screw up the white-space. With most languages, no
problem. You paste it into emacs and it fixes it all up for you.
> I think that people had this big reaction
> against whitespace when they saw Pascal and C as the next
> big thing that would replace FORTRAN and they wanted to
> show that they were cool by allowing whitespace to be
> anywhere at all. Since then all they have done is argue
> over indentation and pretty printing standards...
I guess that's because there are so many options available. At least
with scheme there aren't really many options - only the aesthetic
decision on where to break lines.
> This implies that these characters cannot be used in
> normal identifiers (a good idea anyhow for general sanity)
I don't think it's a good idea unless there really is some future use in
mind. It might be nice to have identifiers called my{car} or my{house}.