On Fri, 15 May 2009, Sarah Allen wrote:
> - Errors for which the error messages were hard to figure out
> Shoes. app (note: they are trained to put a space after the period) also
> Shoes . app
The first is acceptable ruby: I recall seeing lines split after a '.'
on Ruby-Talk (possibly from the late Guy Decoux).
I point this out because it is an interesting failure mode which
may tell us something useful.
I can verify this for Ruby 1.8.7's IRB
13:32:36$ irb
irb(main):001:0> (3 * 7). to_s
=> "21"
irb(main):002:0> (3 * 7).
irb(main):003:0* to_s
=> "21"
irb(main):004:0>
But I don't have a 1.9.1 on any machines yet, so can't tell you if
that has changed. You might point out that COBOL ends statements
with a period, but everything else since C and Pascal, possibly Algol (I'd
have to check, no time now) uses ; for this. It does make a bigger splat
on the printout, so it is easier so spot an errant one, but linguists
have objected. [Hope I've remembered that correctly.]
I suppose next time you get to do your talk you can include Wolfram|Alpha
if they are successful this weekend.
Good luck with the install issues: I've seen this kind of thing reported
about Alice as well, but don't recall seeing any fixes.
Hugh
