From: Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@...>
Date: 2010-07-07T17:36:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Hashes don't allow preceding commas by design?

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It's not hashes it is the parser in general. When it parses a line (up to
the newline) if the line appears compete then the parser expects a new
statement on the next line. So with

1: => a, b = 1,
2: => 2

Line 1 is incomplete so the parser treats line 2 as a continuation of line
1. But with

1: => a, b = 1
2: => ,2

Line 1 is complete in that the line contains a valid Ruby statement so the
parser expects the next line to be a new statement, line 2 is in error
because no valid Ruby statements start with a comma.

This is what you are seeing in your examples.

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