From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: 2008-05-04T13:40:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby 1.9 wishlist

On Fri, 02 May 2008 18:52:46 -0500, Marc Heiler wrote:

>> You could do
>>   if true
>>      p :true end
>> and that's already in the language
> 
> But in all fairness, this is not the same as he said:
> 
>> I'm a huge fan of one liners like:
>> x if y
>> ... but sometimes it just doesn't fit on one line and you need to do if
>> x ... end.   Needing an extra line for that end really really sucks.
> 
> I can understand this partially. If one wants to fit in ~80 chars /
> line,
> and even has a few variables that may be a tad longer, or more
> conditions
> to check, that line would quickly get quite long, and thus you will
> naturally end up doing a newline (and then an end).
> 
> I dont think the end should be on the same line at all. In fact what he
> seems to have suggested was to completely drop the end in this scenario.
> This seems to be not possible, but it is simply not the same as putting
> the end on the same line :) [Not sure if you agree, but I think the end
> on a newline is easier to read than an end on the same line]
> 
> FWIW I personally do not mind the newline+end at all. I dont really
> think it leads to ugly code or code that "sucks".
> 
> On the other hand though, I would like to have some language that allows
> this dropping of closing clauses without writing it, but which is also
> "more ruby than python" (I dont really like the def __foo__(self): stuff
> ...)

Python's whitespace isn't the dealbeaker for me about that langage. It's 
the need to explicitly mention self in the parameter list.

> It also seems though that most languages out there simply have a really
> horrible syntax, but maybe ruby spoiled me ...

I could see a way to do it, by using the presence/absence of the "then" 
keyword, but that would be very unintutitive, and we'd be explaining to 
newbies the difference 10 times a day here on ruby-talk. Best to leave 
well enough alone.

--Ken

-- 
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/