Subject:
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Re: Backwards Compatibility (Was Calling all Meta-commands)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Sun, 16 Mar 2003 17:54:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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2442 times
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Tim Courtney writes:
> In lugnet.cad.dev, Dan Boger writes:
> > On Sun, Mar 16, 2003 at 04:08:51PM +0000, Tim Courtney wrote:
> > > > Advance users that edit the files manually already have
> > > > to understand the file format, with everything that goes with it.
> > >
> > > Sure, understood. I still like the idea of a more common character; even
> > > encapsulating (META) in parenthasees is more common.
> >
> > sure, that works almost as well as {}. It's the _lack_ of any
> > punctuation that bothered me there.
>
> Cool.
>
> Although I don't have that much (if any) of a say in punctuation/no
> punctuation, I could go either way. I still prefer no punctuation, to keep
> it consistent with the way it's been done before. BUT - can't always get
> hung up on the past :-)
I think we cannot ignore the backwards compatibility issue though.
What we want is an explicit way to differentiate comments from
meta-commands. I think defining an explicit mechanism for comments is
completely backward compatible, because if you do not recognize the first
token in a type 0 record, it is a comment.
By using (META) or {META}, you've caused more hassles than you've solved.
Now we programmers have to change our programs to parse type 0 records in
two ways: The way we have today ("0 token"), *and* the new way ("0 (META)
token"). It makes a lot more sense to me to provide an explicit way to
differentiate comments using some keyword (COMMENT, //, #, !, etc.) You
document the magic comment token so that no one can ever define that as a
meta-command, and you greatly reduce the probability that someone's first
token in a comment line is mistaken as a meta-command.
It is very common in programming language to differentiate comments from
language significant grammar using comment start tokens than it is to
identify the things the computer is supposed to pay attention to (i.e. (META)).
Using (META) causes more work for us programmers and really doesn't solve
much of anything.
> -Tim
Kevin
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