Re: what about allowing to specify, which end belongs to which start?

On 7/11/10, Robert Klemme <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 11.07.2010 13:32, Caleb Clausen wrote:
>> On 7/11/10, Robert Klemme<[e-mail]>  wrote:
>>> IMHO this is not feasible: "if<condition>" is almost always followed by
>>> a line break.  And think about
>>
>> Yes, but 'if' itself almost never is.
>
> Unfortunately the word "almost" makes this unusable for creating a
> parser.  How do you want the parser to decide if the case at hand is one
> of the rare cases?  Even if it would be feasible this sounds like an
> awful hack and I'd rather not make parsing more complicated (and thus
> slower) as it is today.

The syntax change I proposed requires forbidding a construct which is
currently legal but rarely used and considered to be poor style. What
is wrong with that? In those few cases where someone decided to
separate an 'if' from its condition with a newline, the code would
have to be rewritten (inserting a backslash to make the newline soft
is the easiest way). Such constructs should be rewritten anyway, for
purely stylistic reasons.

This new feature, like most,  will make the parser ever so slightly
slower. The delta is tiny and not worth mentioning.

And it will make the parser a little bit more complicated; however,
there are already many special cases and complications in the parser.
One more is not a big deal. The philosophy of ruby's syntax overall is
to make the parser complicated if it makes life easier for the user. I
think this change at least ought to be considered under that
criterion.

Now if you want to argue that Jan's proposal is esthetically
unpleasing, I won't really disagree. But just leave it at that. I hate
it when people try to throw up a lot of rhetorical chaff when their
real, and only valid, objection amounts to a subjective judgment call.