Re: Parenthesized Target Notation

Ian Elliott <[email protected]> wrote:
	So no one appears to like the (|..|) parentheses (they remind me
	a little of hamburger buns) that the ECMA Eiffel standard
	specifies but I cannot help feeling that the attempt to remove
	special cases from the language by reducing a rule from "A
	semicolon is optional, except..." to "A semicolon is optional."
	is a laudable aim:  special cases complicate things - just look
	at the number of postings the pesky little ";" has generated.

I agree that trying to remove special cases from a language is a laudable.
But a failed attempt to do so is still a *failed* attempt, and it is not
laudable to adopt a failed attempt in a standard.

In this case, what has resulted is that yet another special case has
been *added*, without actually solving the general problem.  What's needed
is a *general* solution, and when we have it, there will be no need for
barred parentheses.
	
I suspect that a rule along the lines of 'if the syntax would allow a
semicolon at the end of a line, act as if there was a semicolon there'
would do the least damage.  Within an expression, a semicolon is not
allowed between (...) or [...] or {...} or after an operator, so

    invariant
        (a			-- no semicolon here
         - b) < c
	a			-- semicolon here
	- b < c	
	f			-- semicolon here
	(x+1).g
	f(			-- no semicolon here
	 x+1).g
	x <			-- no semicolon here
	    y

The current syntax allows semicolons to be omitted anywhere, but
the style rules say only to do this at the end of a line, so nicely written
Eiffel code shouldn't really notice the change if the style rule were
enforced.

At least this rule is the right *kind* of attempt in that it directly
addresses the real problem (missing semicolons) rather than one (out of
several) symptoms of the problem.