Philosophical question regarding statement terminators

Can someone point me to a good source of information on the pros/cons of the
requirement some languages have for statement terminators, such as the
semicolon in C, Pascal, etc.?


I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that all languages that allow statements to
span more than one line must meet one of the following requirements:


1) Statement terminators required.
2) Line continuation indicator required.
3) Completely unambiguous grammar without 1) or 2)


The root of my question is really this, given an existing language that
currently does not allow a statement to span more than one line (so EOL
serves, inherently as the current statement terminator), and the said
language is being enhanced to allow inline blocks of "free form" code, what
would determine for the language designers whether to require 1) or 2) or
neither? Are there any general parsing or compiler-related rules that would
determine this?


Thanks in advance for any information.


Steve Brazzell
[Please reply directly to him. -John]

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