3 ms·
Is there some reason we can't just do away with both and consider spaces in languages?
by josephschmoe 12y ago
Is there some reason we can't just do away with both and consider spaces in languages?
- tzs 12y agoI've often wanted spaces in C. Because C makes heavy use of required punctuation, there aren't many places that a keyword can be adjacent to an identifier, or two identifiers can be adjacent, so for the most part I don't think spaces would introduce ambiguity. Offhand, I can only think of a couple problem areas (but my C language lawyer days are long gone and I'm way out of practice--anyone else have some I'm missing?). 1. "goto foo;" could either be a goto keyword and the label foo, or a really stupid expression involving the variable "goto foo". 2. "int foo();" could be a forward declaration of the function foo, or an invocation of the function "int foo". There would also be some questions about preprocessing. If I have something like "x pos = 12;", and I have a #define pos foo" in effect, does that apply to the "pos" in my "x pos"?