On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 03:32:20PM +0200, Maria Matejka wrote: > We can simply change the lexer state externally from the parser as soon as > the hex( prefix is seen, and provide the result directly from the lexer. > > This way, we can allow all the syntaxes like hex(de-ad-be-ef), > hex(de:ad:be:ef), hex(de ad be ef) or even hex(dea:db-eef) just by ignoring > nonalnum characters altogether. > > Here I'd strongly prefer nicer user experience over setting the syntax to > best fit our needs.
Which would lead to syntax that is extremely confusing (i.e. hard to intuitively grasp the right mental model just from meeting examples), so i think hex(...) variant is also worse from user experience point. As a user, i always hated unexpected special cases in syntax, even if they might be expedient in some cases. > I don't think any user really cares about the lexer/parser difference. People came with some preconceptions based on knowledge of syntax of other programming / configuration (and also regular) languages, so they have (either explicit or intuitive) concept of elementary / compound statement. If there is someting that looks like existing compound statement, but is in fact something completely different, it is confusing. -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Ondrej 'Santiago' Zajicek (email: santi...@crfreenet.org) OpenPGP encrypted e-mails preferred (KeyID 0x11DEADC3, wwwkeys.pgp.net) "To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so."
