🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4167@osc.COM> jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane) writes:
[In 'C' notation]:
--------
{ { I think the people arguing for significant use of whitespace
have good intentions, but they're a little misguided;  Basically
i think they're solving a problem that doesn't exist; } { In C the
syntax of statements and blocks is so simple, i can state it in
less than a line: a statement ends with `;', and `{' and `}' delimit
blocks;  I've been using C for a long time and i have a number of
gripes about the language, but this is not one of them;  The syntax
is simple and easy to use;} { Because of the simple syntax, editing
C code is easy;  You can cut and paste arbitrary blocks, without
having to adjust the indentation if you don't feel like it;  A neat
property is that you can hit M-q (fill-paragraph) in Emacs, and
the code may become very hard to read but it still works fine;} {
In English the rule is simple:  sentences end in `.' and questions
end in `?'; You could propose a scheme where periods are optional
at the end of a line, and add some way to indicate that a sentence
continues to the next line; But if someone did this, people would
laugh at him;  Why fix what isn't broken?} { Also there is the
issue of readability;  Some people claim that the form without a
semicolon `looks better'; This is clearly a matter of taste, and
it probably depends on whether you're used to reading pseudo-code
or C code;  I actually like the other form better;  If you use a
normal indenting style, it's true that the semicolon is redundant,
but a little redundancy can make it easier to read;} { In FLs we
have a number of schemes which make use of whitespace;  But what
do you gain from this; What it comes down to is that you can avoid
typing a semicolon or braces in some cases;  But these schemes are
more complicated than those they replace;  Some languages say that
you can use a semicolon to separate statements, but that it's
optional in certain cases depending on surrounding whitespace;  By
the time you have rules like this, the elegance has been lost, and
you have to wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just always put the
semicolon;}}
--------


You really think that's more readable?  Well, to each his own...:-)
OK, sure, I took out all the indentation, but then, I could do the
same in C, right?  And the fact is, because you CAN leave it out,
many DO.  Take a look at any of Lee Adams'(TAB) books, the C versions
-- that code is unreadable.  He might as well have left it in BASIC.

Yes, English uses periods, and if C used them instead of semicolons, I'd
be overjoyed.  And look! English uses whitespace (!) to delimit blocks
(paragraphs) instead of ugly {}'s.  And can you imagine if sub-paragraphs
were used in English (not just Legalese) to the extent they are in
C or Lisp, and we had to use {}'s or ()'s to delimit them all?
Yuck.  I'd go learn something easier, like Mandarin(!).

Basically, explicit statement delimitation is probably a good idea, but
block delimitation should use whitespace.  In off-side rule languages,
you do run into the problem of indenting yourself off the page.  You
could avoid that, but still reap the benefits of the off-side rule by
using it only for block delimitation.  I also suggest a modification
to the rule such that the amout of white space in the first line of a
block determines the amount that delimits.

I.E: the C code:

if (test) {
  statement1;
  while (test) {
    statement2; statement3;
    statement4;
  }
  if !(test) {
    statement5;
  else {
    statement6;
  }
}

becomes: 

if test
  statement1.
  while test
      statement2. statement3.
      statement4. 
  if !test
    statement5.
  else
    statement6.



---Don Loflin, dll@emx.utexas.edu