3 ms·

Can't recall exactly where I saw it, but one of the major language designers (I think for Perl) was talking about how there was a plan to abstract some things l

by memco 9y ago

Can't recall exactly where I saw it, but one of the major language designers (I think for Perl) was talking about how there was a plan to abstract some things like quotes such that a character used to quote a string in any spoken language would be a valid way to declare a string. This didn't seem to go so far as to also allow this for keywords, but for symbols the thought was that you could simplify things a little bit for others by not requiring only symbols common to an english keyboard.

liveoneggs 9y ago
in perl 6 you can quote strings in quite a few ways! https://docs.perl6.org/language/quoting https://docs.perl6.org/language/quoting "Quoting" is all defined inside of a sub-language called "Q"
- vidarh 9y ago
  Ruby has pretty much the same flexibility. "%" followed by almost any non-alphabetic character starts a quoted string. But most then become the quote character. If the quote character is at least <,(,[ or { then the end-quote character is the corresponding >,),] or }. These are all equivalent: %<x> %"x" %{x} %!x! Unfortunately the rules are loose enough that even space is a valid quote character. So this too is equivalent to the above: % x ("% x ")
  - sethrin 9y ago
    One more equivalent expression: ?x A question mark followed by any other single character is treated as a string literal containing that character.
  - b2gills 9y ago
    No it doesn't have the same flexibility. Perl 6's string quoting sub language has various feature flags that you can turn on or off. Here are a few of the basic ones shown in valid code (comments and newlines included) # start quoting with no features enabled # (not even backslashing the delimiter is enabled) Q :scalar # enable $foo :array # enable @foo[] :hash # enable %foo{} :closure # enable { 12/3 } :function # enable &foo('bar') :single # turns on backslashing the delimiter :backslash # enable \n :!exec # turn off executing it (redundant) :exec(0) # another syntax for turning off a feature {…} # various delimiters are allowed (generally punctuation) There are shorter variants of each of the feature flags. :c => :closure I would like to point out that the parsing of the :closure and :function part of the sub language is reentrant. (Actually most of them add some form of reentrancy, it is just harder to show it for the others) "a b &foo( "c d &bar( "baz" )" )" Note that this reuses the base Perl 6 parser, and that is why it is reentrant. There are shortcuts for regularly used forms ｢｣ =:= Q[] '' =:= q[] =:= Q:q[] =:= Q:single[] "" =:= qq[] =:= Q:qq[] =:= Q:double[] =:= Q:b:s:a:h:c:f[] =:= Q:backslash:scalar:array:hash:closure:function[] The ability to turn off features can be useful qq :!c [a {\n b\n} c] # { and } don't form a closure here I would like to point out that the :foo syntax is used everywhere in the language for named parameters to routines and operators (most operators are implemented as subroutines) :foo =:= :foo( True ) =:= foo => True :!bar =:= :bar( False ) =:= bar => False :$baz =:= :baz( $baz ) =:= baz => $baz If the delimiters are paired () <> {} ｢｣ «» “” ‘’ you can double up on them. q<FOO> =:= q<<FOO>> =:= q<<<<<FOO>>>>> This is useful to avoid having to backslash a delimiter within the string, or trying to find a delimiter that isn't in the string. q<< <a> >> =:= q' <a> '

by memco 9y ago

liveoneggs 9y ago

in perl 6 you can quote strings in quite a few ways! https://docs.perl6.org/language/quoting https://docs.perl6.org/language/quoting "Quoting" is all defined inside of a sub-language called "Q"

vidarh 9y ago
Ruby has pretty much the same flexibility. "%" followed by almost any non-alphabetic character starts a quoted string. But most then become the quote character. If the quote character is at least <,(,[ or { then the end-quote character is the corresponding >,),] or }. These are all equivalent: %<x> %"x" %{x} %!x! Unfortunately the rules are loose enough that even space is a valid quote character. So this too is equivalent to the above: % x ("% x ")
- sethrin 9y ago
  One more equivalent expression: ?x A question mark followed by any other single character is treated as a string literal containing that character.
- b2gills 9y ago
  No it doesn't have the same flexibility. Perl 6's string quoting sub language has various feature flags that you can turn on or off. Here are a few of the basic ones shown in valid code (comments and newlines included) # start quoting with no features enabled # (not even backslashing the delimiter is enabled) Q :scalar # enable $foo :array # enable @foo[] :hash # enable %foo{} :closure # enable { 12/3 } :function # enable &foo('bar') :single # turns on backslashing the delimiter :backslash # enable \n :!exec # turn off executing it (redundant) :exec(0) # another syntax for turning off a feature {…} # various delimiters are allowed (generally punctuation) There are shorter variants of each of the feature flags. :c => :closure I would like to point out that the parsing of the :closure and :function part of the sub language is reentrant. (Actually most of them add some form of reentrancy, it is just harder to show it for the others) "a b &foo( "c d &bar( "baz" )" )" Note that this reuses the base Perl 6 parser, and that is why it is reentrant. There are shortcuts for regularly used forms ｢｣ =:= Q[] '' =:= q[] =:= Q:q[] =:= Q:single[] "" =:= qq[] =:= Q:qq[] =:= Q:double[] =:= Q:b:s:a:h:c:f[] =:= Q:backslash:scalar:array:hash:closure:function[] The ability to turn off features can be useful qq :!c [a {\n b\n} c] # { and } don't form a closure here I would like to point out that the :foo syntax is used everywhere in the language for named parameters to routines and operators (most operators are implemented as subroutines) :foo =:= :foo( True ) =:= foo => True :!bar =:= :bar( False ) =:= bar => False :$baz =:= :baz( $baz ) =:= baz => $baz If the delimiters are paired () <> {} ｢｣ «» “” ‘’ you can double up on them. q<FOO> =:= q<<FOO>> =:= q<<<<<FOO>>>>> This is useful to avoid having to backslash a delimiter within the string, or trying to find a delimiter that isn't in the string. q<< <a> >> =:= q' <a> '