On 26/02/18 20:17, John Rose wrote:
Any*finite choice* of end-quotes has the same problem, with
a non-zero probability that decreases (but does not vanish)
with the number of available end-quotes. The only way to
break out of the box is to allow the user an unlimited range
of successively "stronger" end-quotes (i.e., less likely ones).
In reality there is a 'finite' upper bound for this length, which is
given by 2^16 /2 = 2 ^ 15. That's the maximum delimiter size you could
encode in a Java String which you can also symmetrically close - and
it's an edge case, as it will contain the empty string.
So, yes, on paper, I agree with the argument, in practice, I guess I'd
me more in favor of limiting the number of repetitions - I wouldn't like
to open the door to puzzlers:
`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````hello`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
(which might leave some Ascii art lovers a bit unhappy :-))
I think limiting to 8 or some other reasonable small number will
probably reduce the clash probability enough? And, even if it's not
enough, I guess we'd still be left with the question if a long (possibly
unbounded?) escaping sequence is something we'd like to see in Java.
Maurizio
