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000081_icon-group-sender _Mon May 10 18:16:58 1993.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Tue, 11 May 1993 18:40:11 MST
Date: 10 May 93 18:16:58 GMT
From: dog.ee.lbl.gov!network.ucsd.edu!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!ellis!goer@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Organization: University of Chicago
Subject: Re: runtime debugger and the Icon fan club.
Message-Id: <1993May10.181658.3966@midway.uchicago.edu>
References: <1993May7.182643.26824@netlabs.com>, <1993May7.205551.1831@midway.uchicago.edu>, <1993May10.160302.6574@netlabs.com>
Sender: icon-group-request@cs.arizona.edu
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Status: RO
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall) writes:
>
>Hmm, looking back at that last paragraph I wrote, I only see one period
>at the end of a line, and that one, being at the end of a paragraph, is
>superfluous... :-)
But your sentences don't generally coincide with the end of a line. If
they did, then you might dispense with the period as a mandatory sentence-
marker.
The implementation of the Icon tokenizer is a curious, but conceptually
very simple piece of work. Tokens are classified as beginners or enders
or neither. If a line ends with an ender, and the next line begins with
a beginner, a newline is emitted. I've written countless lines of Icon
code by now, and a good deal of C as well. Both systems have their good
points and their bad points, I guess. The bottom line is that the auto-
matic insertion regime is much more pleasing and much simpler to imple-
ment than is usually supposed.
Try it on for size for a while. I'll bet you'll see some redeeming fea-
tures. If most semicolons coincide with line breaks, and if continued
expressions are best written so that each line ends in something that
obviously requires a continuation, then there is (in point of fact) not
much need for semicolons.
--
-Richard L. Goerwitz goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
goer@midway.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer