Re: Recording what we decided *not* to do, and why

John Porter wrote:

> Glenn Linderman wrote:
> >
> > When using an inline comment, I want to spend my character budget mostly
> > on the comment, and just enough on the delimiters to see it
> > effectively.  #< magic here ># would do quite nicely
> >
> > When reading a script, I'd like to be able to quickly distinguish the
> > comments using my eyeballs and brain, without the need to involve my
> > fingers and editor....
>
> Bogus arguments both, at least wrt #<...># vs qc<...>.
> Same number of characters overhead, same LACK of obviosity to the eyeball.

We can agree on the same number of characters overhead.  My comment
regarding
#< ... ># characters were intended to address comparisons with things
like
using "#<<token ... token" in an in-line fashion, not as comparison with
"qc<...>".

Regarding obviosity, # end-of-line comments already exist and the
eyeball has
become trained to consider them as comments... for many years of shell,
make,
hosts file, etc. usage, long before Perl, the eyeball has learned to
pick out
# to mean beginning of comment.  #< (or the like, any bracket character,
or,
with deference to the multitudes of C and Pascal programmers, even the
"*"
character, as in "#*...*#") is a simple extension to #, and, by use of a
bracket character (or *), implies there will be an end.

qc<...> clearly raises the expectation of bracketing, but builds on
absolutely
no semantics with respect to commenting.  Rather, it builds on the
semantics
of quoting, so the eyeballs wouldn't detect it as a comment, and the
brain
would wonder what kind of quoting this should be.  Eventually, no doubt,
the
brain would catch on, but it would always remain confusing to the
eyeballs, as
the "qc" sequence could so easily be found in other, non-comment
situations.

While the "#" character is legal to use for other syntactical purposes
in Perl
(any place that "any character" is permitted, for example, q#...#, the
availability of so many other characters to fill that bill causes me to
avoid
using # in those situations.  The only situation in which I use
non-comment-introducing "#" characters in my scripts are within quoted
strings, where the "#" is required to appear for the purpose of the
script.
This encourages the eyeballs to retain their "# as comment" scanning
ability!

--
Glenn
=====
There  are two kinds of people, those
who finish  what they start,  and  so
on...                 -- Robert Byrne


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