"Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng" <hgs / dmu.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.53.0302231919130.23615 / neelix...


> One suggestion: get rid of '\' notation.  Too many programs use it.
> Yes, it is nice to have a consistent standard, but when you pipe a
> text string though a couple of these then you end up with \\\\\
> which are really bad for the eyes! :-)  {brace} {closebrace} could
> allow insertion of your special characters.

OK, I think I got this wrong in my previous answer - I thought you meant
STEP would end up with \\\\, but you mean any external processor, like we
have seen with regular expressions in strings. I still don't think it is as
much of an issue because STEP doesn escape '\' itself, but you do have a
valid point. Personally I would grow tired of typing it, but as an
alternative it would be good. It could also be {(} {)}. Completely avoiding
any other escape than {} is appealing because there is less to explain. It's
easy to say "{" => "{()" and "}" => "{)}". And theres no - but what about \.

In fact, in my current prototype, parsing \{ keeps creeping in as a bug. So
implementation wise it's also easier and cleaner. I think I'll buy it -
preferring {(} and {)} for typability and readability. But suggestions are
welcome.

Files.new("foo").each {openbrace} |line| {br}
  p line{br}
{closebrace}

Files.new("foo").each {(} |line|{br}
  p line{br}
{)}

But cleaner would be

{yburuby|
Files.new("foo").each { |line|
  p line
}
|yburuby}

.... if you ever wondered what palindromes are good for ;-)

Mikkel