Notes IV

[Bill Baxter]

Jarrod wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:08:46 +0900, Bill Baxter wrote:
> 
>> It's funny you should say that, because just today I was staring at a
>> couple of foreaches that were giving me compiler errors and scratching
>> my head.  Turns out I had written this:
>>
>>       foreach(i,ang, angles) {
>>           ...
>>       }
>>
>> Now maybe you can see right away what's wrong, but in my somewhat sleepy
>> state and with my preferred ProggyTT programming font, I just didn't
>> notice the missing pixel there.   It's much harder to mistake a comma
>> for an 'in'.
> 
> But there will still be a comma or a semicolon there for cases where you 
> want the index.
> Wouldn't just allowing commas and semicolons work better?

Was that part of the proposal?  I was just wanting the semicolon to be 
replaced by 'in' in all cases so you'd never see a semicolon in a 
foreach. Ever.  Anyway this has been asked for before.  Walter said "no" 
because the grammar would have to be special cased to treat 'in' 
differently inside the foreach.  It's a reasonable decree.  I still pine 
for it, though, every time I accidentally put a comma in there instead 
of a semicolon.  :-)

> 
>> Hmm, that doesn't sound like a scientific study.  Python has many more
>> users than D despite the fact that apparently most people don't like it.
> 
> Perhaps I should say 'many' instead of 'most' don't like it. I frequent 
> and moderate a few programming forums, and trust me, there are a *lot* of 
> groans and moans about it. *Especially* from the lisp/scheme fans. They 
> seem to hate it with a passion. Some have even written some 'interesting' 
> poems about it. True story.

Ok, that is certainly true.  I myself thought it was ridiculous till I 
tried it.  Now I merely think of it as an acceptable alternative.  I 
think it's mostly a wash.  Slightly cleaner-looking code at the cost of 
some slight annoyances.  The biggest of those to me is that you have to 
be a little more careful when you copy-paste a block of code in the 
middle of some function. In many cases an editor cannot tell what 
nesting level you intend for it to be at.  But it's not a big problem by 
any means.

--bb