From: Jeffrey Schwab <jeff@...>
Date: 2006-02-03T12:53:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Indentation vs. "end"s

Cameron McBride wrote:
> I'm out of my league, but...
> 
> On 2/2/06, Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> 
>>We are experimenting double semicolons as well as "end"s,
> 
> ...
> 
>>But I'm still not sure if it's good enough to be remained in 2.0.
>>No, don't worry, we are NOT going to remove "end"s from the language;
>>double semicolons are just alternative.
> 
> 
> why?  quite seriously, and quite naively, I don't understand the benefit.
> 
> Maybe it's just me, but the
> 
>  class Foo
>    def bar(a)
>      p a;;;;
> 
> looks really different from the (current) standard
> 
> class Foo
>   def bar(a)
>     p a
>   end
> end
> 
> It sounds to me like it'll make reading ruby libraries / code a bit
> more difficult since both can exist.  Is it worth that price?  Am I
> missing something?

;; is used to end case statements in some popular Unix shells.  I have 
to admit that ;;;; still looks a bit odd to me.

Thank you, Matz.