🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5992@utcsri.UUCP> norvell@utcsri.UUCP (Theodore Stevens Norvell) writes:

>The discussion about using indentation to indicate program structure is
>interesting to me as I have designed a language which does exactly this
>and written a compiler for it.  My feeling is that the parser should
>read programs (approximately) the same way that people do.  In particular
>the most important information used by people to understand the control
>structure of programs -- namely the indentation structure -- should
>not be simply thrown out by the compiler.

This kind of stuff is better enforced by language-sensitive editors and
pretty-printers, not compilers.  I don't mind if there is some lint-type
program that gives me warnings if I make an indentation mistake, but I
don't want the compiler choking on it.  It is a hard job to define what
'readability' is, and I really don't want to slow my compiler down by
putting some unnecessary restrictions on indentation.  And without
language-sensitive editors and/or pretty-printers, it is very hard always
getting the indentation right.
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