3 ms·
Typically commas and semicolons don't have to be matched with open-commas and open-semicolons and you won't see several of them together like ';;;;'. There is a
by flukus 8y ago
Typically commas and semicolons don't have to be matched with open-commas and open-semicolons and you won't see several of them together like ';;;;'. There is a lot less ambiguity over what is ending than something like this example (worst case) from TFA:
> (lambda _ (for-each make-file-writable (find-files "." ".*")))))))
',' and ';' are far more convenient too, the sit right next to m and l, parenthesis require finger stretching and the shift key.
- rekado 8y agoI'm using paredit, so I'm never typing out closing parentheses. I'm just slurping and barfing s-expressions all over the place. I don't see parentheses but syntax units that my editor ensures remain correct. (I can understand the frustration if I was forced not to use Emacs, which has s-expression navigation commands, and if the use of paredit were forbidden.)
- Fice 8y agoIt's the great advantage of Lisp syntax that it supports structural editing in a complete and unified way, and paredit enables the leap from editing code by manipulating plain lines of characters to directly editing code as hierarchical structure.
- thibran 8y ago> Typically commas and semicolons don't have to be matched with open-commas and open-semicolons This is a problem that is non-existent when you use common tooling to write Lisp, like ParEdit or Smartparens. Since nobody would write C++ in Microsoft Word, nobody writes a lot of Lisp code without auto-matching parentheses tools.
- scentoni 8y agoWhat C and its descendents have instead is numerous repetitions of '\s}\n' to end if-then-elseif-else switch-case for while until functions methods classes and good luck figuring out which matches which when there's more than a screen between the beginning and the end of a block