4 ms·

I wish a language was designed to allow identifier with space in them without quotes. That is the most readable. But I don’t know the consequences to the rest o

I wish a language was designed to allow identifier with space in them without quotes. That is the most readable. But I don’t know the consequences to the rest of the grammar

jfk13 4y ago
Try Algol68.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
Underscores are visually very similar to spaces. Their major problem is unrelated to their appearance - it's that you have to use a key combination in order to type them on a standard keyboard. The obvious solution would appear to be to use better keyboards, but I don't even see anyone suggesting that. But note that the lisp identifier style, words-separated-by-hyphens, is better than using underscores despite being less legible. It's purely a matter of how easy it is to type the separator. ("Standard" languages don't allow hyphens in identifier names because they want to allow subtraction without requiring a space between the subtraction operator - and the two operands. In Lisp, spacing around an operator, including the subtraction operator, is required. You could go a long way in a C-like language by just requiring spacing around operators and immediately being able to allow hyphens in identifiers.)
- downvotetruth 4y ago
  > Their major problem is unrelated to their appearance Shift key is a problem for all the shifted only chars. Their major problem is appearance: a single underscore '_' vs underscores '__' . Concatenated glyphs are hard to discern due to only distinguisher being width.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    I have no idea what you're trying to say. You just compared underscores with underscores; relative to underscores, underscores cannot even theoretically have any problems at all.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
wizofaus 4y ago
Use non-breaking space for identifiers and regular/breaking space as a delimiter? Admittedly you'd want an editor that clearly showed the difference and made the former easy to type.
userbinator 4y ago
But I don’t know the consequences to the rest of the grammar We have various natural languages to tell us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity
orbital223 4y ago
DAX, used in Microsoft's Power BI, allows for identifiers with spaces.

I wish a language was designed to allow identifier with space in them without quotes. That is the most readable. But I don’t know the consequences to the rest of the grammar

jfk13 4y ago

Try Algol68.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

Underscores are visually very similar to spaces. Their major problem is unrelated to their appearance - it's that you have to use a key combination in order to type them on a standard keyboard. The obvious solution would appear to be to use better keyboards, but I don't even see anyone suggesting that. But note that the lisp identifier style, words-separated-by-hyphens, is better than using underscores despite being less legible. It's purely a matter of how easy it is to type the separator. ("Standard" languages don't allow hyphens in identifier names because they want to allow subtraction without requiring a space between the subtraction operator - and the two operands. In Lisp, spacing around an operator, including the subtraction operator, is required. You could go a long way in a C-like language by just requiring spacing around operators and immediately being able to allow hyphens in identifiers.)

downvotetruth 4y ago
> Their major problem is unrelated to their appearance Shift key is a problem for all the shifted only chars. Their major problem is appearance: a single underscore '_' vs underscores '__' . Concatenated glyphs are hard to discern due to only distinguisher being width.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  I have no idea what you're trying to say. You just compared underscores with underscores; relative to underscores, underscores cannot even theoretically have any problems at all.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

wizofaus 4y ago

Use non-breaking space for identifiers and regular/breaking space as a delimiter? Admittedly you'd want an editor that clearly showed the difference and made the former easy to type.

userbinator 4y ago

But I don’t know the consequences to the rest of the grammar We have various natural languages to tell us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity

orbital223 4y ago

DAX, used in Microsoft's Power BI, allows for identifiers with spaces.