Alpheus Madsen said: > -- How do we pair up two lists on a single line? If I understand correctly, > the '\\' SPLICE context creates two lists, where we would expect one list. > Does it also wrap up the two lists in a single parent list?
Ah, I think I see the issue. We've had lots of proposals on the table; sorry about the confusion. Alan Manuel Gloria and I are provisionally agreeing on SPLIT semantics, not SPLICE. See [Current]. As the name implies, SPLIT *breaks up* a line it's in the middle of into two lines. We don't have *agreement* on anything that joins up a list, though there are several on the table. My guess is that we won't be adding one, but we'll see. > -- What happens when we have a sublist indent after a line with a '\\' > SPLICE? Does it become a sublist of the last list of the SPLICE? Again, we have SPLIT not SPLICE Example 1 (where \\ means SPLIT): \\ ! f(a) ! f(b) => ((f a) (f b)) \\ g(a) ! g(b) ! g(c) => ((g a) (g b) (g c)) >I think using a '\\' is better than a single '\' is better, because it is more >visually appealing. Good! My *primary* concern is to avoid symbols that will *prevent* acceptance, but we should strive for as much visual appeal as we can manage. Nobody likes looking at nasty-looking code. > -- To get to the bottom of the issue of whether it is valuable to admit "." > as whitespace, I think we need real code examples. While coming up with fake > examples can be informative (I hadn't thought about the implications of "\\" > splice and following sublists...), ultimately, they are also dangerous, > because they don't represent actual code, and how it might be naturally written. Agree. I've written a lot of code samples, see [Examples] and the examples subdirectory. > -- I'm still on the fence with this, although one compelling argument *for* > the convention involves my experience with Python: when I'm desperate enough > to replace all the " " indents with "--|" or ". (or something just as > heavy), it eliminates the possibility of cutting snippets of Python and > pasting it into an REPL. Of course, Python, with its tradition of including > ellipses before every line in its REPL, makes it more difficult to cutting > snippets from the REPL and pasting it into an editor--and impossible to paste > *back* into the REPL. Fair enough. Which is also why I think it's critical that the interactive syntax and the file syntax be exactly identical. And suggests that there is value to a non-whitespace indent character. > I think this example also shows that using two spaces for indentation, when > whitespace is significant, can also be difficult to read. In using Python, I > tent to prefer three spaces, but when the editor defaults to four, I don't > fight it (and it's probably better too); and there are certainly times where > a LOT of indentation clears things up really quickly! That's probably a style thing, I *like* 2 space indents. But as long as the reader *permits* both, I think that's okay. --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
