From: Rich Morin <rdm@...>
Date: 2006-09-26T04:09:54+09:00
Subject: Re: "" vs ''

At 3:10 AM +0900 9/26/06, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2006, at 12:03 PM, Rich Morin wrote:
>
>> Use '' by default:
>>
>>   -  It's less work for the interpreter.
>
> What makes you say this?

If the interpreter sees a single-quoted string, it knows
that it doesn't need to scan the string for things (such
as escape sequences) to expand.  I agree that this effect
will be lost in the noise, in most cases, but why make the
interpreter do extra work?

The real point, in any case, is one of making things clear
to the reader.  If a quoted string uses double quotes, the
reader has to look it over to determine whether any magic
is being performed.  This wastes some of the reader's time
(and no, I don't have a benchmark for this. :-).

-r
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