On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:07 PM, bill lam <[email protected]> wrote:
> ...
>
> I am skeptical of this approach, it may work for [compilers] but not for
> interpreters like J. For instance, how to do interactive debugging?
>

I built a new copy of one of my longer scripts using Fraser Jackson's
idea of marking code with a leading tab, and it looks really slick. Of
course it requires a bit different handling, but in my use scripts
tend to be run as a whole. When I'm doing interactive work I work in a
console session rather than directly from a .ijs file.

I agree with Raul that the tab character would be problematic for
publication, but for contained use, within a personal or team effort,
it seems to me that it could work fine. The source file is strikingly
clean.

For those who have not seen it, Haskell uses an initial '>' character
to mark code when written in the manner described. Thinking about it a
bit more, though, it seems to me that any character (or constant
character combination) could serve as that identifier. For long
explicit definitions I like the looks of '|' (vertical pipe) but for
one-liners Fraser's whitespace looks better.

Tracy
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