Kartik Agaram: > I fear that 'pressing' might be distorting our sense of the relative > frequency of different constructs. SPLIT/SPLICE is for arc's if; there it > actually looks good as a separator. I would be less concerned about SPLIT if > it's going to be fairly uncommon in other situations.
We need *some* sort of GROUP-like symbol (we expect it would be the first symbol on a line) so that we can handle lists-of-lists. You don't need them constantly, but they are really important - I'll argue they are necessary for practical use. The SPLIT semantic is one of several alternatives that enable this. You don't need it all that often, but you really do need it. SPLIT *between* symbols is one of those things that is not needed in many cases, but in those few cases where you want it, you REALLY want it. A key use case is anything that uses keyword arguments, where the keywords are at the same list level as the datum that follows them and there can be multiple keywords. E.G., my-funny-function(:keyword1 100 :keyword2 200 :keyword3 300 :keyword4 400) isn't too bad UNLESS one of the parameters is complex & needs to be indented further. Then the "obvious" way becomes: my-funny-function . :keyword1 . 100 . :keyword2 . 200 . :keyword3 . my-complicated-calculation . . foo . . bar . :keyword4 . 400 Although the above WORKS, it completely obscures the relationship between keywords and their arguments, AND it takes a lot of precious vertical space. With SPLICE, you can do this: my-funny-function . :keyword1 \\ 100 . :keyword2 \\ 200 . :keyword3 . \\ my-complicated-calculation . . foo . . bar . :keyword4 \\ 400 Or even: my-funny-function . :keyword1 \\ 100 \\ :keyword2 \\ 200 . :keyword3 . \\ my-complicated-calculation . . foo . . bar . :keyword4 \\ 400 > Another example: I didn't even realize Common lisp permits backslash-escaping > in symbols. Eeurgh! But nobody uses it, so it doesn't bother me and I don't > have to bother with it. Well, a lot of people use Common Lisp, where it is *required*. In addition, some Schemes implement slashification too. I'm rather curious what Alan Manuel Gloria thinks about my "\\" symbol idea, which I believe eliminates the problems from slashification. --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
