-1 as last item problem

[Dar Scott]

On May 13, 2005, at 7:08 PM, Dennis Brown wrote:

> Notice the missing last comma on the second line.  It does not matter 
> how many commas I append, it will always leave off the last one unless 
> there is another character at the end.  Unless I do not understand how 
> this is supposed to work, this is a bug.  Yes?

I believe the way it works is correct.

It accommodates the best compromise in being able to represent both an 
empty list and a list of one item that is empty.

If comma is between, then those look the same.  You can't represent 
both.  If the comma is after, then you can represent both.

Now a comma in between is just fine for lists that do not have any 
empty items.  In that case, the empty string means the empty list.  So, 
for non-empty items, the traditional list is fine.

If items can be empty, then it would be better to represent lists with 
the comma at the end of each item.  In both cases the number of items 
and item representation works.

The same applies to lines.  I think that is easier to accept.  For 
items, it is harder; a comma should go between things.

Dar Scott



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