From: billtj@... (Bill Tj)
Date: 2002-10-12T13:33:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Confusion on Keywords

Hi Hal,
> 
> You used the term "variable indicators" earlier which
> betrays some confusion on your part. Characters such
> as $ and @ are not indicators as such, they are simply
> part of the name.

Oh yes, totally agree.  They are very obvious when we write Ruby in C.
 All the $, @, and @@ are really part of the whole C string (Ruby does
not automatically add them for us).  If we keep staying in C, in which
case the Ruby interpreter is not involved, I guess we can use any
prefix that we like or even no prefix at all.

> In addition, surely you don't think that
> anObject.class is a single identifier? It is
> obviously three tokens.

Probably I was not using exact terminology.  If "identifier" is used
as in the "C: A Reference Manual" book, definitely it is not a single
identifier.  My confusion stems from the fact that, I think, in some
other language like C, keywords have very high precedence during
lexing and parsing.  Therefore, when we get to the level where we know
that "anObject.class" is three tokens, it surprised me that back then,
after we know that the second token signifies a method call, the lexer
still treats the third token as a possible keyword instead of just an
arbitrary string token, and this back then necessitated the invention
of the method "type".

Regards,

Bill