On May 20, 2009, at 3:10 PM, J Haas wrote:

>> Also could parsers handle it?
>
> I think so, especially since the preprocessor I've used (wish I could
> remember its name... it's not Lazibi [1]) does it in a fairly clever
> way in Ruby itself, so I don't see why the parser couldn't do what it
> does.

A friendly suggestion: One of Ruby's strengths (one that it shares  
with Perl) is its power to manipulate and parse strings. If you're new  
to Ruby, a script which takes your colon/de-indent syntax and turns it  
into the proper do/end syntax sounds like a great project to get  
started. Since you desire to write Ruby code in this way, it would  
also give you a great excuse to approach this problem using TDD. That  
is, write the code in the way you would like it to appear as a test,  
then write the parser/de-re-mangler to have the test pass. I honestly  
think you could have done this with the same amount of effort as it  
has taken to reply to each of the e-mails in this thread.

Let me be frank: Your suggestion is not new. Code speaks louder than  
words. When you _do_ implement this alternative Ruby syntax, I think  
you may be surprised at the number of corner and edge cases. Ruby is  
currently in the process of being standardized. I would imagine the  
last thing that Ruby needs while undergoing the standardization  
process is a new, optional syntax with a multitude of corner and edge  
cases.

Cheers,

Josh