On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 04:05:55PM -0600, Paul Seamons wrote:
: > Other available chars:
: >
: > <`ws>
: > <^ws>
: > <&ws>
: > <*ws>
: > <-ws>
I forgot we're using - already, so scratch that one...
: > <|ws>
: > <:ws>
: > <;ws>
: > </ws>
:
: I'd vote for <:ws> which is vaguely reminiscent of the former non-capturing
: parens (?:).
I'm not sure a resemblance to P5 syntax is really a recommendation... :)
: It (<:ws>) also bears little similarity to any other regex construct -
: although it looks a bit like a Perl 6 pair.
Which might be a good argument for reserving the syntax for real
pairs somehow. Also, pairs have special arguments, and people would
wonder what <:foo(...)> <:foo[...]>, <:foo{...}> and <:foo<...>> mean.
Not to mention <:!foo>.
I should have pointed out that I think all the candidates from the
last list are long shots for various reasons. </ws> looks like a
closing tag. <*ws> is visually confusing with other * usages, and while
<^ws> implies some kind of negation culturally, it's a form of negation
we're trying to get away from, in favor of consistently using !.
The first list is the ones I'm really considering, and of those, <.ws>
is the easiest to type and gets out of the way of identifier visually.
It also looks like a method call, which in fact it is. <~ws> is hard
to type, and <\ws> can be confused with \w. The problem with <=foo>
I already mentioned. The only strangeness about <.foo> I see is that
arguments would presumably continue to parse like like ordinary
assertions: <.foo bar> and <.foo: bar> might be misread.
I dunno, maybe <\ws> isn't so bad...
Larry
