"Hal E. Fulton" wrote:
> 
> See below...
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Slagell <mslagell / iastate.edu>
> To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk / netlab.co.jp>
> Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 5:38 AM
> Subject: [ruby-talk:5503] Re: 2 ideas from Haskell
> 
> > hal9000 / hypermetrics.com wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > In article <39E609EF.4A7672D6 / iastate.edu>,
> > >   Mark Slagell <ms / iastate.edu> wrote:
> > > > Do either of these interest anyone:
> > > >
> > > > 1. a "literate mode" that assumes all lines in a script are comments
> > > > unless the first column is a special character (Haskell uses '>').
> > > >
> > >
> > > Hmmm... not on my Top Ten list of features. I think =begin/=end are
> > > basically enough...
> >
> > I have to disagree there: the =begin/=end scheme distinguishes comments
> > from code easily from the interpreter's standpoint but not from the
> > reader's (who has to look around for delimiters); it makes it a little
> > easier to write comments but in the end makes it harder to read them.
> 
> OK, I see your point.
> 
> > Allowing the option to swap the code/comments default doesn't have that
> > first-glance-ambiguity problem, and is a way to facilitate _very_
> > literate programming, where there are often more comments than code.
> > This may be of little concern to most of you (rubyists seem to abhor
> > comments as much as perlists do! yeah, flame away at me for that :-) but
> > it also allows some interesting possibilities such as being able to feed
> > something essentially like natual-language documentation to the
> > interpreter, peppered here and there with bits of real code.
> 
> I can see where this might be of some value... but I *think* I might like
> some
> other way of distinguishing besides the file extension. Maybe a command line
> parameter? Or maybe something embedded at the top of the file? For scripts
> using #!, of course, they become almost the same.
> 
> Hal

You're right. The file extender is a Haskell convention, and as I think
of it, it wouldn't be necessary for ruby.  Use something like -L as a
command line parameter

Also, it seems important that the character (or string) indicating a
line of code should not be (or contain) '#'.

  Mark