Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote: > Hi, > > In message "Re: A comparison by example of keyword argument styles" > on Mon, 24 Oct 2005 00:07:01 +0900, "Trans" <transfire / gmail.com> writes: > > |I hate to say, but it seems like the selection of a character commonly > |used for assignment operations, i.e. ':' as a prefix for symbols has > |come back to haunt. Go back in time Matz! Throw out the '=>', use ':' > |instead, and chose us another symbol symbol! > > For example? It that good enough to break thousands of lines of code? Not if you go back in time it won't ;) Might have used backtick `abc, kind of like Lisp 'literal, or maybe backticks `abc`. Leading underscore _abc might have worked well too. But as you say, that's a lot of code breaking --that would be a major shift. T. P.S. If you're keeping ':' might you deprecate '::'? That'd help.