From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp@...>
Date: 2003-08-04T07:01:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby could be wildly more popular if it had ...

Saluton!

* Michael Garriss; 2003-08-03, 17:39 UTC:
> Could you take this discussion off the list please.

Sorry ... I just wanted to point out that different opinions exist
even on that subject.

As far as the use of parentheses in Ruby are concerned I don't see a
necessity to add more of them to Ruby's syntax. If one really wants
to use lots of them this is already possible, if one wants to avoid
them as far as possible this is also feasible. One should note that
one can easily avoid parentheses in C by means of two almost trivial
preprocessor defines:

#define begin {
#define end   }

int main(int argc, char **argv)
begin
  if (argc < 2)
    begin
      return -1;
    end
  else
    begin
      return argc-1;
    end
end

The result is some new programming language - it's no longer C (one
should keep in mind that C++ started as C preprocessor macros).

Adding new parentheses to Ruby would result in something similar:
'Ruby--'

Gis,

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
-- 
N'attribuez jamais � la malice ce que l'incomp�tence explique !
-- Napol�on