When is linebreak used? That is, when is it superior to [?
Henry Rich
On 4/1/2023 11:29 AM, Eric Iverson wrote:
I am in favor of linebreak as well as a linejoin. I'd very much like to
have an easier to type NB.
.. NB.
... linejoin (followed by comment)
.... linebreak
I used to think internal and nested comments were important, but not
anymore. Not enough bang for the required mechanism.
On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 10:48 AM Jan-Pieter Jacobs <
[email protected]> wrote:
I'd be in favour of both .. and ... .
Regarding ... , I'd like to note that Matlab uses the same as line joiner
(see
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/continue-long-statements-on-multiple-lines.html
),
and also turns everything after that into a comment (which is very handy).
This would let one also comment longer tacit verbs well, without any
extraneous NB.'s . Trivial example would be:
avg =: ...
+/ ... sum
% ... divided by
# ... count
Your first comment would be incompatible with the easy commenting (without
using NB.).
I don't like the .:. proposal, since it is more difficult to type different
characters instead of the same; I'd rather have ::: (could imagine them
looking like the holes for shoelaces, that can be used to tie together
lines)...
Jan-Pieter
On Sat, 1 Apr 2023, 11:26 Elijah Stone, <[email protected]> wrote:
Some time ago, Michal proposed that a line separator be added. I want to
rekindle that discussion. The proposal was that .. behave like a line
break
when placed on a single line, such that e.g. {{ a=. y+y .. a }} 2 would
do
the
obvious thing. Short, distinctive, and to the point.
I also want to propose a line _joiner_, analogous to \ in shell or c:
...,
placed at the beginning or end of a line should join it with the previous
or
next. Joining lines happens _after_ stripping comments, unlike the other
languages I cited; the goal is to enable large, multi-line definitions
with
commentary for intermediate terms, without the need for pointless
intermediate
definitions.
It might be objectionable to use such similar symbols for separators and
joiners. But maybe it's not such a big deal. Two more ideas:
1. Could use the _same_ symbol for both, with its sense depending on
where
it's placed in a line.
2. Separator could be .:.; metaphor: a hill stops the interpreter in its
tracks.
I don't like 2 because the larger the separator is, the more annoying it
is to
use. Joiner can afford to be large, since it only comes into play if the
rest
of the line is sufficiently large.
Anyway--thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?
-E
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