Eric Sven Ristad wrote:

> Note that the Ruby "end" statements do not have to occur on
> separate lines.  If you want to save screen space, you can write
>          if (predicate) then X else Y end
>          for i in (0..n) do function(i) end
> all on one line in Ruby, which could be difficult to do with
> an indentation-based syntax.

This is one of the very few points that I wanted Ruby to have done
otherwise.  Those one-line statements (Ahem, expressions) look cluttered
to me.  Compare

    if (cond) {print something; exit 0}

with

    if (cond) then print something; exit 0 end

The problem here is that the keywords "then" and "end" aren't clearly
distingushied from "print", "something", or "exit" at a glance.
So, I hesitate to use one-line conditional or looping statements
in Ruby, while I often use them in Perl and C(++).

Of course, it's too late, I guess, because Ruby already uses the curly
braces for a different purpose.

Cheers,
Ryo