RE: ~= vs. !=

[Reuben Thomas <rrt@...>]

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 RLake@oxfam.org.pe wrote:

> Nick Trout escribió:
>
> > The syntax seems to have settled a little now but
> > adding lots of optional syntax could just make Lua more cryptic in the
> > future. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
>
> Here here!

Just to reinject a contrary note, one of the principles of Lua that I like
is that it's not afraid to break compatibility between releases where
there's a point. I'm not in favour of optional syntax either, as mentioned
before; I'd much prefer # as the only short comment delimiter, and != as
the only not-equals operator. I think we differ solely in what we consider
broken. In my view, ~= and -- are two pointless stumbling blocks that
newbies and experts alike have to remember. They are minor in terms of
language functionality, but (at least for me) disproportionately annoying
in terms of wasted brain cycles (other than those spent writing this
message!). It's about as annoying as having to use a US keyboard rather
than a UK keyboard (for those not in the know, that switches a couple of
punctuation signs around): I regularly make typos.

In short, it may look like fiddle-faddling over brass tacks rather than
tackling more important issues, but in fact it would cheer me up quite a
bit on a minute-to-minute basis when typing Lua if these two misfeatures
were cleared up. Best of all, the fix is trivial in terms of coding (both
for the Lua system, and to search-and-replace to make code compatible).
Much less trouble than the Lua 4->Lua 5 reorganisation of the standard
libraries, which had me cursing at some points as I rewrote code, but
similarly brought (rather more high-level) benefits.

-- 
http://www.mupsych.org/~rrt/ | traddutore, v.t.  traditore (Anon)