Why introduce an artificial limit? Identifiers don’t have a limit. 3.8. Identifiers An identifier is an unlimited-length sequence of Java letters and Java digits, the first of which must be a Java letter.
— Jim > On Feb 26, 2018, at 5:29 PM, Maurizio Cimadamore > <maurizio.cimadam...@oracle.com> wrote: > > > > 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
