On 3 Dec 2003, at 17:32, Jason Trenouth wrote:
For example, are you disputing that the following is a type name, by convention, in Dylan?
<foo>
Unlike C++, or some other languages, the angle brackets are not part of the grammar of the language. They are just constituent characters in the identifier itself. The identifier is not called "foo". It really is called "<foo>". Moreover there is nothing to stop Dylan programmers calling their types "foo", or "Foo", or "-FOO-". It is just a convention encouraged by the designers of the language to put angle brackets around type names.
I wonder, naively, if names like that are a good idea. I tend to pronounce Foo and foo and fOO all the same way, and I'd probably do the same for <foo> and -FOO- most of the time. Perhaps I'm a subvocaliser, but when I'm reading stuff I hear it in my head, and if I only hear "foo" then the distinctions which the language is preserving might not get through to me.
I try to say x in a breathy voice and X in a loud voice but I know I soon forget, and I am pretty sure that particular example has tripped me up in ML.
Perhaps I'm saying: you don't just read it, you understand it in various ways. I'm not saying sound is one, but when your understanding is low, and you have no other hook to hang a word on, it might be the one you use.
Richard Bornat
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