From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2008-04-07T16:47:03+09:00
Subject: Re: syntax request

Hi --

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> Well, while you're at it, how about supporting the FORTRAN II continuation 
> syntax of a non-blank character in column 6? ;)
>
> Seriously, though, the only programming languages with "perfect" syntax are 
> probably Lisp/Scheme and Forth. The rest of the world can't seem to agree on 
> whether a semicolon is a statement terminator or a statement separator, how 
> one deals with line breaks, what white space is good for,  or how complicated 
> a regular expression is allowed to get.

I think it's OK for there not to be universal consensus on these
elements of syntax (which is just as well, since there never will be
:-) but what concerns me is exceptions and special cases within a
language. I certainly wouldn't want to see lines of Ruby code
beginning with , or +, and I have to say that this, in 1.9:

   puts object
   .methods

has left me rather puzzled. If that works, then this should work:

   ruby -e ".methods"

but it doesn't -- which means that the whole thing introduces a new
kind of "default object", other than self: an object to which an
otherwise uninterpretable dot is supposed to connect.


David

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