Re: Request for clarification on reserved names

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

On Apr 29, 2014, at 2:19 AM, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 3:51 AM, Paige DePol <lual@serfnet.org> wrote:
>> I do not believe I have ever used a language in which the keywords were also usable for variable names, and after reading that mess above, I don't believe I would ever want to.
> 
> Yep, there's a good reason for keeping keywords and identifiers in
> different namespaces - and also for keeping punctuation in 'symbol
> space' (which is why I don't care for 'dir?')

I can see the utility of the `?` at the end of a function name, perhaps even the `!`, though the same can be achieved without the symbols via naming conventions.


>> I would put reuse of keywords right up there with significant whitespace as far as "bad" language features go!
> 
> Oh, significant indentation is easy enough to get used to, especially
> with editor support - one learns to become very indentation-aware.
> van Rossum's point is that one should indent anyway, why not make it
> meaningful?  It isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I like Lua's syntax
> choices, but it's one of the proven ways to indicate block structure
> in PLs.

I often will place temporary code, for debugging typically, outdented with the current block so I always remember to remove it. If I somehow forget it is very easy to spot when scanning over the code!

~pmd~