Re: The semicolon habit (was: Q: Definition of a scripting lang.)

Semicolons are not only just a habit, they are a very bad habit.


In one study a large amount of C code was scanned for lines without
semicolons. It excluded things like fun_call(a,
b);
To look only for expressions on more than one line. It seems that
about a fourth of the lines found were errors. The missing semicolon
was simply wrong about one fourth of the time. Clearly C would be
better off with no semicolon and with a rule allowing continued lines.
Perhaps new line ends a statement except within an open (), or [].


Further I find {} silly. Everyone in their right mind indents. Count
indentation from the leftmost character of the previous line. Either
eliminate tabs as valid within programs or give them some standard
meaning like a tab takes you to the nearest 4's boundary. I would
prefer eliminating from the language, this doesn't mean editors
couldn't use tab as a command to put in spaces.


This means we could write
if x < y
cout << "hello world\n"
cin >> i


Instead of
if (x < y) {
cout << "hello world\n";
cin >> i;
}


The former is obviously a lot cleaner and eliminates a lot of style
disputes. Further it eliminates the common error where {} are
forgotten and the user forgets that indentation is not syntax.
Lines and indentation are the most obvious parts of code, the
compiler should see them too.
--

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