Semicolons: mostly unnecessary?

[Christopher Wright]

AJ wrote:
> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
> news:hbo88h$1qk$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> AJ wrote:
>>> Walter, do you write at all? If so, why not take a breather and write an 
>>> article about this, given that you have direct experience in addition to 
>>> opinion on the topic? :)
>> I write an awful lot - blogs, documentation, articles, presentations, etc. 
>> The ; debate, though, is a very old and tired one, and makes me tired just 
>> thinking about it :-) So many much more interesting things to write about.
>>
>> Bottom line: yes, there is a case both ways. Nobody will be convinced to 
>> change sides. Both can be made to work. There's nothing new to say about 
>> it.
> 
> How about just a list of pros and cons for each? Or even, just the esoteric 
> things that you as an implementer may already know that the layman doesn't?

If you're trying to catch C/C++ coders, you need semicolons. If they're 
optional in some circumstances, that will lead to recommendations that 
you always include them in case the code changes to require them.

This only leaves the possibility of removing semicolons entirely. This 
would mandate newlines as separators instead. Then you'd need a 
different character to negate newlines. The C/C++ crowd would leave at 
this point, since that's just silly. (Though less typing.)