Comment by eru
3 years ago
> That doesn't make the set of non-whitespace delimited languages empty.
Well, there's also the opposite: Goldman Sachs's Slang allows space as part of identifiers.
3 years ago
> That doesn't make the set of non-whitespace delimited languages empty.
Well, there's also the opposite: Goldman Sachs's Slang allows space as part of identifiers.
> Well, there's also the opposite: Goldman Sachs's Slang allows space as part of identifiers.
Many SQL implementations permit whitespace in identifiers, but then you need to use quoted identifiers.
That's reasonably sane of SQL. In Slang, you don't need to quote. (The syntax is still unambiguous. In principle, eg Python could do something similar, because they don't have any existing syntax where you just put two identifiers next to each other with only a space in between. But C could not, because variable declaration is just two identifiers, one for the type and one for the variable name, next to each other with a space in between.)
In Slang, are “x y” with different number of spaces in the middle different identifiers or different spellings of the same identifier? SQL standard says different identifiers
> eg Python could do something similar, because they don't have any existing syntax where you just put two identifiers next to each other with only a space in between
The interaction with keywords would cause some issues. For example, right now, “if” is not a valid identifier (keyword), but “if_” and “_if” are. However, with this proposal “x y” could be a valid identifier, but “x if” would introduce ambiguity
> But C could not, because variable declaration is just two identifiers, one for the type and one for the variable name, next to each other with a space in between
This is one aspect of C syntax I have never liked. I always wish it had been Pascal-style `x:int;` instead of `int x;`
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