Steven,

I think Dave means something else.

He wants the two to be different but not asymmetrical. In other
words, view the punctuation marks as downward-pointing
clock hands.

In my font on Windoze, backtick points at 4 or 5; single-quote
points at 6. Dave, I think, wants single-quote to point at 7 or 8,
i.e., to be a mirror image. No ambiguity and no asymmetry.

But that's not what I'd like.  :)

Now, to talk about something more on-topic... :)

I have recently discovered that things that I thought were "reserved
words" can actually serve as method names and the like.

This shocked me. It doesn't really bother me, but it surprised me.

For example, I used a method named "class" and it worked fine.

How do keywords really work in Ruby?

Hal


----- Original Message -----
From: stevan apter <apter / panix.com>
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk / netlab.co.jp>
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2000 1:09 PM
Subject: [ruby-talk:03011] Re: mismatched quotation


> Dave Thomas <Dave / thomases.com> wrote in message
news:m23dn3lt4t.fsf / zip.local.thomases.com...
> > "Hal E. Fulton" <hfulton / austin.rr.com> writes:
> [:]
> >
> > From that I'd guess you're a Windows user. I just popped over to my NT
> > box, and you're right, the ` and ' are not symmetrical there. On my
> > Linux box under X, however, they make a perfectly matched pair, just
> > as they would when typeset.
> >
> > I wonder if there's a Windows codepage that represents the ` and '
> > characters better?
> >
>
> i should think that would have the unpleasant consequence of making
> ` and ' indistinguishable in *code*.
>
> just look at the first paragraph quoted above, and consider how it
> reads when amended to include "proper" quotation:
>
>     the ``' and `'' are not symmetrical there
>
> now consider how it would read if the ` and ' were indistinguishable:
>
>     the ''' and ''' are not symmetrical there
>
> in fact, when mixing code and commentary, i rarely use quotation.
> if the text is ascii, and there is a risk of misreading, i will
> sometimes affix a space to the code:
>
>     the variables a  and b  depend on c .
>
> but, for the most part, it makes for smoother reading to mention
> the code as though you were using it, as you have done:
>
>     the ` and ' are not symmetrical there
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>