From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-09-08T14:44:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby


----- Original Message -----
From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@hypermetrics.com>
>
>
> One idea I've wondered about is making the parser "smart"
> enough to (at least) speculate about where an error *really*
> happened, based on indentation.
>
> This would be a small tip of the hat to Python, I suppose.
> If an 'end' was indented differently from its corresponding
> beginning, a warning would be generated. But then it would
> interfere with people's styles, and there would always be
> some people who would mix spaces and tabs in creative and
> irritating ways and set the tabstops to some setting that
> the interpreter could never hope to guess.
>
> It would work for *me*, though. :) Maybe I should create a
> Ruby version of lint (rint?).

Please, please do!  (I'm sure it would be useful to 99% of Ruby programmers.)

> Hal

Gavin

PS. The interpreter could still have this logic but only warn you if the "end"s
don't match up /in toto/.  That sort of warning would at least stay out of
people's way until they need it.