From: "Adam P. Jenkins" <thorin@...>
Date: 2005-08-02T03:51:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Yet Another useless Ruby 2 Idea

gabriele renzi wrote:
> Lothar Scholz ha scritto:
> 
>>
>> gr> Ok, I admit that it's not a big deal, but what do people think of 
>> this?
> 
>  >
>  >
> 
>> Sorry for being very rude, but this one is the one of the most stupid 
>> and ugly idea
>> i'have seen in the last weeks.
>>
>> It hides errors, reduces readability and just for the benefit to save 
>> a few keystrokes ?
> 
> 
> the rudeness it's ok, but I disagree that it reduces readability.
> My main reason is that imho it actually improves it, but obviously it 
> must be a personal opinion since we disagree on it.
> 
> OTOH I don't see which kind of errors it does hide.

Take your example:

class Foo
  def bar(x)
   puts x
  def baz
   puts 'baz'
  Const=:someconstant
end

With the existing syntax, this would unambigously be a syntax error due 
to missing end keywords.   With your proposal, it could be correct, or 
it could really be this (only indentation changed), with the last two 
"end"s missing:

class Foo
   def bar(x)
     puts x
     def baz
       puts 'baz'
       Const=:someconstant
     end

or

class Foo
   def bar(x)
     puts x
     def baz
       puts 'baz'
       Const=:someconstant
   end

or

class Foo
   def bar(x)
     puts x
     def baz
       puts 'baz'
   Const=:someconstant
end

or various other indentation permutations.  In short, without 
significant whitespace, the meaning of the code is now ambiguous.  This 
is the problem with Python's significant whitespace: if you accidentally 
re-indent something, it's impossible to just highlight the code and tell 
the editor to re-format, because there is literally no way for the 
editor to tell what was intended.