From: Justin Collins <justincollins@...>
Date: 2010-02-20T05:24:23+09:00
Subject: Re: strings combine

Raul Jara wrote:
> Roger Pack wrote:
>   
>>> I think you misunderstand what I was saying.  I was not asking what the 
>>> differences between the parser and the runtime are.  I was asking for a 
>>> rationale.  If Matz believed that strings, when placed together without 
>>> any punctuation between them should be concatenated, why didn't he make 
>>> it standard operating behavior?  I can't imagine it would have been so 
>>> difficult for when the parser sees two variables in a row to treat it as 
>>> equivalent to a concatenation call on the first variable with the second 
>>> variable as an argument.  If Matz didn't think that two strings should 
>>> be concatenated, why program that behavior into the parser?
>>>       
>> Yeah it ends up being pretty hard to generate a parser that will do 
>> both.
>> -rp
>>     
>
> I'm not sure why, though.  The parser is able to turn
>
> x + y
>
> into
>
> x.+(y)
>
>
> What would be so hard about having the parser turn:
>
> x y
>
> into
>
> x.+(y)
>
> ?
>
> Or if you only think strings should work that way, and not numbers:
>
> x.concat(y)
>   

Because

x y

already means

x(y)


-Justin