Re: Lark - A surface syntax for Common Lisp
"David McClain (as dbm at refined-audiometrics dot com)" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.lisp.lispworks.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Your complaints are exactly what I would have expected. I really don’t understand how anyone could think that some invisible entity should have syntactic significance. Indentation for readability is fine. But to have it impact the semantics is just crazy. > On Feb 16, 2026, at 16:27, Greg Menke (as gregm32768 at comcast dot net) <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 2/16/2026 5:11 PM, Tim Bradshaw wrote: >> >> >>> On 16 Feb 2026, at 13:32, Greg Menke (as gregm32768 at comcast dot net) <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> But how can an editor handle substantial levels of nesting cleanly? It is ever so easy to add/delete a space even by accident and then things get ambiguous. >> >> Even if that were true which in my experience it is not when using any slightly competent editor, it is surprisingly hard for this to happen in Python for instance. >> You can only increase indentation where the syntax allows it, and then it is not optional to do so. >> Assuming you use n-space indentation steps then a line which is outdented by 1 to n-1 spaces from its expected indentation is a syntax error. >> You are not allowed to use any mixture of tabs and spaces for indentation which depends on the width of a tab, which in effect outlaws any indentation scheme which is not either pure tabs or pure spaces. >> The people who may find this hard are those who use single-space indent steps. OK. >> >> --tim > > I still don't get it, not trying to be difficult I just don't understand how python is not fragile. I don't use single-space indents, use Emacs and 3 or 4 spaces for indents. Yet its crazy easy to accidentally move code following a conditional up into the conditional, or bring code out of the conditional just by accidentally hitting a tab, and then ambiguity can spread if the region of code is deeply nested. The block move keystrokes are a lifesaver, but I keep getting into little indenting problems when code is complex. Its not a problem I ever have with C/C++ or Lisp, or Java, heaven help us. > >