Re: [Proposal] Change default _PROMPT from "> " to "> " (two spaces)

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2018-02-03 18:11 GMT+02:00 Soni "They/Them" L. <fakedme@gmail.com>:
> Hi! As you may or may not know, Lua uses _PROMPT and _PROMPT2 in the
> standard REPL (indeed, it's described in the reference manual).
>
> Their default values, e.g. when unset, are "> " and ">> ". There are some
> reasons why this isn't good:
>
> 1. Terminals have block selection mode (hold control while selecting). The
> different widths makes this difficult.
> 2. That's about the only reason.
>
> I propose we change this so the default/fallback _PROMPT and _PROMPT2 are ">
> " and ">> " respectively, i.e. they have the same width by default. This
> would work really well with block selection.

There is of course the obvious (to Linux users) workaround,

    alias lua="lua -e \"_PROMPT, _PROMPT2 = whatever\" -i "

which caters also for the case where someone does not like your proposal.
For example, some time ago someone on this list proposed ';' instead of '>'
which has the advantage that you can cut-and-paste from actual session
output without causing syntax errors. Personally, I like whitespace best.