Re: Quoted atoms are no longer operators

On 11/27/2013 03:34 PM, Kilian Evang wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 22-11-13 16:36, Jan Wielemaker wrote:
>>    - Quoted atoms are no longer operators.
>
> also about this change, I'd like to know: is there a (very) good reason?
> If not, I'd like to add my voice to what Richard said [1]: this is a bad
> idea, making e.g. operators with spaces in them impossible.

True. I've never seen them in the wild though. Putting white space
inside identifiers is a pretty bad idea anyway because many reformatting
tools (or editor commands) can silently change this, breaking your code
and anyway, the difference between 'a<space>b' and 'a<tab>b' may be
invisible and the difference between 'a b' and 'a  b' is poorly visible,
in particular when using variable pitch fonts.

Richard's A '\uXXXX' B argument makes a little more sense. On the other
hand, if you want it this ugly, '\uXXXX'(A,B) is just as good (or should
I say ugly).

This is a quite isolated issue.  A quite large majority I spoke to think
it is a good idea.  If there are serious precedents of code basis that
break, we can consider a flag.  In general, I don't like flags though.

	Cheers --- Jan