It's a bit of a pun on the Ruby symbol syntax :foo. Since the symbol :foo
is the quoted form of the identifier foo, the idea is that :
generalizes that syntax to arbitrary expressions. I have now and then
wished that `` was the syntax for that, that's how you quote code in
Markdown and we often write that in email, for example, but that syntax is
already used for Julia shell commands and I rather like that syntax too.
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 6:49 AM, Aubrey Barnard
wrote:
> Julia Users,
>
> I am trying to find out what the rationale is for some of the Julia syntax
> choices, in particular the choice of colon as the quote character. (I think
> knowing the rationale can help those new to the language, like myself, come
> to grips with its syntax.) Is there some discussion or document that you
> can point me to? I searched the issues on GitHub, the julia-dev group, and
> the julia-users group but came back empty-handed.
>
> Thanks for any information or pointers.
>
> Aubrey
>
