From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2010-07-10T04:17:57+09:00
Subject: Re: what about allowing to specify, which end belongs to which start?


On Jul 9, 2010, at 12:05 , Jan Lelis wrote:

> I've recently come across a pretty common situation in Ruby:
> 
>       end
>     end
>   end
> 
> After those parts, you often don't know, where exactly you have to
> continue.
> 
> So what about allowing to specify, which end belongs to which start? 
> I've thought about something like this:
> 
>       end|do
>     end|if
>   end|def
> 
> or
> 
>       end~do
>     end~if
>   end~def
> 
> or
> 
>       end:do
>     end:if
>   end:def
> 
> If you specify it, and it does not match, the compiler throws an error. 
> Of course, you can always omit it to have the normal behaviour, but you 
> are encouraged to often "document", which end belongs to which block 
> (and you do yourself a favour in these nested situations).
> 
> What do you think about it?

I think if you have so many ends that you need to extend the syntax then you're doing something wrong to begin with (no pun). I try to make all my methods short when I can, and I use judicious use of extra returns to separate code into paragraphs to further help. I think this type of syntax extension would further encourage large bad codes.