"bearophile" <bearophileh...@lycos.com> wrote in message news:hbp5qa$1te...@digitalmars.com... > Walter Bright: > >> Adam D. Ruppe wrote: >> >> Ifthepointisntplainobviousfromtheabovefewersymbolsmostcertainly >> doesNOTmeanalanguageisnecessarilyeasiertoparseSymbolsgiveus >> aparsinganchorperiodsinasentencearentstrictlynecessarywecould >> putoneperlineorjustfigureoutwheretheybelongbyparsingthecontext >> Butthatsfairlyobviouslymuchharderthanusingperiodstofollowwhere >> youareSemicolonsarethesamething >> >> (Fixed that for you!) > > Having no spaces is not comparable to having no semicolons, because > newlines are kept. > Better to have a little more complex parser than putting the burden of > adding the correct semicolons on the programmers. >
I'm already kicking myself for trying to jump into the middle of yet another semicolon debate, but..."burden" of semicolons? Isn't that a bit overstated? I suppose it depends on the person, but I find it to be every bit as automatic as reaching for the Shift key when I write camelcase, or hitting enter for a new line, or going for control when I want to arrow around a word-at-a-time. And those are hardly burdens (and sure, technically a semicolon plus newline is more than *just* newline, but only negligibly so). Line-continuation operators, on the other hand, or complex rules for when a semicolon is or isn't required (along with the resulting inconsistency of some things having semicolons and other things not), do tend to noticeably get in my way.
