Re: New long comments in 5.1

[Eric Tetz <erictetz@...>]

Roberto Ierusalimschy wrote:
> An identifier is ambiguous; e.g., a[b[x]] = 3; (Remember that this
> syntax is not only for comments, but for long strings, too.)  More
> often than not we will use zero, one, or at most two asterisks.

But you are already using an identifier, it just has severe
constraints on the characters it can be made of (only '*'). It seems
you are counting on that fact that "a[b[*]]" is less likely to
appear in a comment or string than "a[b[x]]". If you allow an
arbitrary identifier, people can still choose "*" or "*****" if
that's most appropriate.

Anyway, if it must be a single character, I vote for '-' over '*'.

--[--[

--]--]

Still looks goofy, but better than --[**[ --]**].

What about using something like the "here file" syntax from Unix?


--__ARBITRARY_IDENTIFIER__
  blah
  this is a long comment
  blah
__ARBITRARY_IDENTIFIER__


[[__ARBITRARY_IDENTIFIER__
  blah
  this is a long string
  blah
__ARBITRARY_IDENTIFIER__