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OP has a detailed rationale for going with semicolons. Feel free to counter those points, but you can't just dismiss the thing with a "doesn't look right" witho
by fph 1y ago
OP has a detailed rationale for going with semicolons. Feel free to counter those points, but you can't just dismiss the thing with a "doesn't look right" without any argument.
- stared 1y agoRationale: in the most popular modern langugues it is # or //. In JS (well, its why we have JSON), it is //. In YAML, it is #. Moreover - semicolon is a natural character used in comments (unlike // or #). It inferes with our human parsing.
- fph 1y agoThe first point is addressed in the article; you don't seem to address OP's counterpoint at all. I don't get the second point: why is that a problem if a semicolon appears in a comment? From what I understand, comments run until the end of the line, so a second semicolon after the first does nothing.
- NoahKAndrews 1y agoThe problem is when a config value includes a semicolon, and the rest of the line gets ignored unintentionally, especially because strings aren't quoted
- fph 1y agoAh, I see, so the problem is not a semicolon "used in comments", it's a semicolon used outside them. But then which character would you suggest instead? The article notes that there is the same problem with # (e.g. in `black = #000000`) and // (`url = https://en.wikipedia.com https://en.wikipedia.com`). And these are arguably more common.
- Ringz 1y agoWhat about three simple rules to define comments: 1. If # is in the first column of the line. 2. If # is followed by a space. 3. The # only starts a comment when it’s outside of quotes.