To be clear, I am not advocating for any change to the existing sigils. The
main point is that uppercase sigils are more important than lowercase ones
and that, even in _some_ cases you may want interpolation (which would
warrant a lowercase sigil), having a different syntax for interpolation can
be a plus. Look no further than ~H for an example of sigil where the
interpolation syntax is different for several reasons!
On Sat, Mar 4, 2023 at 5:53 PM Amos King - Binary Noggin <
a...@binarynoggin.com> wrote:
> I love this idea. Removing the ambiguity will help with adoption as new
> developers to the language are less confused. It also allows infinite
> sigils to be available without stepping on each other. I'm not suggesting a
> jump on making sigils for everything.
>
> You made the subtle point of sigils possibly having a different
> interpolation syntax. I like the side effect of reducing errors, but it
> also creates another syntax to learn. I like languages requiring you to be
> safer by default, but this isn't a security concern in many circumstances.
>
> ~D[#{year}-08-24]
>
> ~D[{{year}}-08-24]
>
> In the SQL case, it makes sense, but does it for something like Date?
>
> Changing the interpolation syntax saves a small class of errors in
> specific circumstances but creates multiple ways to interpolate that lead
> to confusion, IMO.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Amos King, CEO
>
> <https://twitter.com/binarynoggin>
> <https://www.facebook.com/BinaryNoggin/>
> <https://www.instagram.com/binarynoggin/>
> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/binary-noggin>
>
> 573-263-2278 a...@binarynoggin.com
> Book a meeting <https://calendly.com/amos-king>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 4, 2023 at 2:15 AM José Valim <jose.va...@dashbit.co> wrote:
>
>> Sigils in Elixir are currently limited to a single letter. We had many
>> discussions in the past about allowing more letters but they were
>> ultimately rejected because of lowercase sigils.
>>
>> The issue with multi-letter lowercase sigils is that:
>>
>> 1. they are ambiguous to humans
>> 2. they are ambiguous to machines
>> 3. they may have security implications
>>
>> For instance, I would say that sigils in Elixir have quite distinctive
>> features:
>>
>> var = ~w"foo"
>> var = ~w[bar]
>>
>> Tilde, a letter, and the content surrounded by terminators. However,
>> given how most identifiers in the language are lowercase, I think using a
>> multi-letter starts to become less clear. For example, imagine we supported
>> a sigil named opts:
>>
>> var = ~opts[bar]
>>
>> That's awfully close to:
>>
>> var =~ opts[bar]
>>
>> Which would in fact be ambiguous at the parser level.
>>
>> The other aspect is that security recommendations suggest different
>> interpolations to be used for different aspects. For example, imagine
>> someone wants to implement a SQL query sigil that automatically escapes
>> characters. Today, one could write this:
>>
>> ~q"""
>> SELECT * FROM posts WHERE id = #{id}
>> """
>>
>> And that would be safe! But the fact we are using interpolation means
>> someone can simply forget the ~q at the front and write an _unsafe_ query.
>> It would be much better if the interpolation is different altogether:
>>
>> ~SQL"""
>> SELECT * FROM posts WHERE id = {{id}}
>> """
>>
>> On one hand, it may feel inconsistent to have different ways to
>> interpolate, but at the same time it is reasonable to use different
>> mechanisms when different behaviours and security trade-offs are involved.
>> Especially because #{...} typically means string conversion and that's not
>> the case for SQL queries (it is simply parameter placement).
>>
>> With all of this in mind, the suggestion is to allow only multi-letter
>> uppercase sigils. Most sigils are uppercase anyway:
>>
>> 1. Elixir defines 4 lowercase sigils (~r, ~s, ~w, and ~c) but 8 uppercase
>> ones (the four previous plus ~T, ~D, ~N, ~U for datetimes)
>> 2. Nx uses ~V and ~M for vectors and matrices respectively
>> 3. LiveView uses ~H, Surface uses ~F, and LiveView Native will need at
>> least two uppercase sigils for Swift UI and Jetpack Compose
>>
>> Therefore, I would like to propose for multi-letter uppercase only sigils
>> to be introduced and be, from now on, the recommendation for new libraries.
>> This means we won't deprecate ~T, ~D, ~N, ~U in Elixir, but there is still
>> time to rewrite ~V and ~M in Nx to ~VEC and ~MAT. LiveView and Surface can
>> decide if they want to migrate or not, ~SF may be a better choice for the
>> latter, but LiveView Native can choose to support, for example, between
>> ~JETPACK or ~JC if it prefers an abbreviation.
>>
>> Looking forward to feedback,
>>
>>
>>
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