From: vikkous <google@...>
Date: 2005-04-24T14:34:35+09:00
Subject: Re: announcing RubyLexer 0.6.0

Florian Gro� wrote:
> One simple example would be adding a ".="
assign-result-of-method-call
> operator as in "foo = 'bar'; foo .= reverse"

At first, I thought, "This guy is dreaming; my code is just too rigid
to allow extensions of that kind very easily.". But of course, it
wouldn't be too hard for me to special case this one operator in for
you if you wanted to... it'd just be a quick hack in RubyLexer#dot...
in fact, it could be done in a subclass:
[warning: untested code!]

class FlorianRubyLexer < RubyLexer
  def dot(ch)
     #this is the routine in RubyLexer that handles tokens beginning
with '.'
     if readahead(2)=='.='
        KeywordToken.new(@file.read(2),@file.pos-2)
     else
        super
     end
  end
end

Not too bad for extensibility, eh? I think things look quite hopeful
for your idea, actually....
you do have to know RubyLexer internals to do this kind of thing, but
that's true for any library. And you probably want to add operators
that create no new ambiguities in the language. This one doesn't create
ambiguity, a sign that you've been thinking about this already. Tell me
more of the kind of thing you want, and maybe I'll write more of your
lexer for you.

> See attachment.
> �    pre.rb �

Now that's deviant! Whitespace as a fancy string delimiter... I don't
even know if that's what breaks RubyLexer, but that's sick, man, really
sick.

Ps: what does the code do?