From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Problem trying to implement generics.
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 02:45:40 GMT
Date: 2001-04-23T02:45:40+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104221929320.5275-100000@shell5.ba.best.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <wcczodb2mzi.fsf@world.std.com>
On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Robert A Duff wrote:
> One thing I've considered is having two alternate syntaxes for the
> various control structures. For example, you could say:
>
> if Condition then
> ...
> end if;
>
> or
>
> if Condition { ... };
>
> or something like that. The former would be used when "..." is long;
> the latter when "..." is short (eg three lines or less?) -- so short
> that the "}" is close to the "if", so it's obvious what it belongs to,
> so "end if" is merely clutter in that case.
How about just using the {} and having an optional } if; syntax?
> And probably the {...} syntax couldn't have other control structures
> nested inside it -- it's only allowed for the innermost thing.
>
> Good idea?
I don't like it.
> Oh, and I'd like my editor to automatically convert from one to the
> other as "..." grows or shrinks.
At this point, I say adopt indentation for block structure.
> > I'd really like to use the {} for something else, and there are only a few
> > symmetric bracket pairs to choose from.
>
> What did you have in mind? Literals of type "set"?
Actually, I was thinking of a more lightweight genericity than what Ada
has now and actually using the {} like C++ uses <> and Eiffel uses
[].
> Note that you can invent new bracket-y pairs using some slightly ugly
> syntax like:
>
> (. .)
> (: :)
Ever seen BETA? It does that kind of stuff, and uses (for for), (if if)
kinds of bracketing pairs.
> (* *) -- Pascal uses this one.
It's the source of a syntax bug in OCaml, let (*) x y = mult x y fails :-).
> << >> -- Ada uses this one.
> `` '' -- The TeX "programming" language uses this. ;-)
Funny you mentioned that, I've started using LaTeX again. Sometimes the
old ways are better :-).
> BTW, I wish ASCII had left and right double-quote characters. That
> would be much more civilized.
Oh well. Maybe the decision to restrict a language to ASCII will be viewed
in the future like Ada's current restrictions. There are certainly glyphs
that I'd use if I could but I think ASCII is a fair restriction for the
lexemes of the surface syntax of a language.
-- Brian
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2001-04-23 2:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 63+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2001-04-11 15:04 Problem trying to implement generics Ayende Rahien
2001-04-12 1:41 ` tmoran
2001-04-12 13:15 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-12 18:15 ` tmoran
2001-04-13 11:18 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-13 10:35 ` chris.danx
2001-04-13 11:54 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-13 11:49 ` chris.danx
2001-04-13 23:03 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-13 23:01 ` Robert A Duff
2001-04-14 0:05 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-14 1:12 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-14 1:44 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-14 14:03 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2001-04-14 16:30 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-14 16:28 ` Michael Erdmann
2001-04-15 3:27 ` James Rogers
2001-04-15 12:20 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-15 14:09 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2001-04-15 18:22 ` tmoran
2001-04-15 13:48 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2001-04-15 20:44 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-16 14:34 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2001-04-14 1:33 ` Robert A Duff
2001-04-17 8:50 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen
2001-04-17 13:20 ` Tucker Taft
2001-04-17 16:51 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-17 17:16 ` Larry Hazel
2001-04-17 18:11 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-17 19:10 ` Marin David Condic
2001-04-17 21:08 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-18 15:16 ` Chad R. Meiners
2001-04-18 16:33 ` Marin David Condic
2001-04-17 21:09 ` chris.danx
2001-04-17 21:11 ` chris.danx
2001-04-17 21:17 ` chris.danx
2001-05-08 5:40 ` Lao Xiao Hai
2001-05-11 9:43 ` John English
2001-05-12 19:16 ` Lao Xiao Hai
2001-04-17 19:32 ` Larry Hazel
2001-04-17 21:03 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-18 15:48 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-20 12:34 ` Georg Bauhaus
2001-04-20 12:42 ` Lutz Donnerhacke
2001-04-20 12:45 ` Lutz Donnerhacke
2001-04-20 19:48 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-20 20:36 ` David Starner
2001-04-20 23:02 ` Robert A Duff
2001-04-23 2:45 ` Brian Rogoff [this message]
2001-04-24 1:15 ` Robert A Duff
2001-04-24 2:00 ` Brian Rogoff
2001-04-24 15:12 ` Georg Bauhaus
2001-04-24 15:09 ` Georg Bauhaus
2001-04-24 18:36 ` Marius Amado Alves
2001-04-19 13:08 ` Larry Kilgallen
[not found] ` <9bi4g4$97m$1@nh.pace.Organization: LJK Software <YlSyXUaQmD+$@eisner.encompasserve.org>
2001-04-19 14:20 ` Marin David Condic
2001-04-18 5:34 ` Mike Silva
2001-04-18 16:55 ` Ray Blaak
2001-04-24 16:00 ` Tucker Taft
2001-04-12 13:57 ` Andy
2001-04-13 6:34 ` Simon Wright
2001-04-13 11:11 ` Ayende Rahien
2001-04-12 18:06 ` Stephen Leake
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox