[ANN] LiveCode List Processor

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2015-10-14 06:44, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> I'm not so sure.  At first I was, but after Mark and Mark explained
> how common the ? convention is elsewhere I'm inclined to think that
> the most important thing is that the library works as *you* want it
> to, and if others learn a thing or two along the way as I did so much
> the better.

I'm not so sure either.

Here's the thing - the engine has long accepted a very flexible 
'identifier' token - including (among most other things) the '?' and the 
'.' character. Under the remit of 'avoiding symbol usage in the actual 
syntax as much as possible', then this is fine.

However, the allowing of flexibility of identifiers to this extent 
limits future options and the question is whether being able to use '?' 
and '.' in handler names and variable names is *really worth* the 
curtailing of future endeavour which it represents.

With the spectre of Open Language somewhere on the horizon it becomes 
important to decide whether we should push people away from using 
non-standard identifier characters, or restrict the operators that 
people might be able to cook up in future language extensions.

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps