Original-Via: uk.ac.nsf; Sat, 18 Jan 92 14:50:25 GMT
Backquotes with or without whitespace are both fine with me. Paul and I
did in fact discuss this, and when he made his decision, I think it was
a pretty close call.
--Joe
|I see from Joe's revised syntax that he proposes allowing
|
| ( {-white space-} + {-white space-} )
|
|where previously only (+) was allowed. That seems great to me.
|
|He also proposed allowing
|
| ` {-white space-} f {-white space-} `
|
|where previously only `f` was allowed. I can see the logic, but I don't
|agree with it. I think we should insist on `f`.
|
|The difference is this: people are used to parens being separate tokens,
|and to have a special case just because there is only a single operator
|enclosed seems peculiar. But backquotes are not used for anything else,
|and I'd really want to discourage bizarre stuff like the above example.
|
|So I propose:
| the back-quote stuff in the lexical syntax,
| and the paren-ifying in the ordinary syntax.
|
|Does anyone else have an opinion. I don't think there are any technical
|issues here; just stylistic.
|
|Simon
