Mailing List Archive: Spaces in prototypes

Spaces in prototypes

Nov 26, 1995, 1:46 AM

Post #1 of 3 (309 views)

I found that spaces in prototypes are not tolerated:

F:\perl52\lib>perl -we "sub a ( \$ ) {print shift} a($1,$2)"
Malformed prototype for main::a: \$ at -e line 1.

This is very unfortunate for Emacs since having
sub a ($) {blah}
will leave `)' to be "quoted" by `$', thus leaving `(' unbalanced. I
think that the blanks on the boundary of a prototype may be swallowed
by the parser, any objections?

Ilya

Re: Spaces in prototypes [ In reply to ]

tchrist at mox

Nov 26, 1995, 4:24 AM

Post #2 of 3 (299 views)

Permalink

>This is very unfortunate for Emacs since having

I am more than merely slightly unfond of emacs's parsing idiotsynchrasies
continuing to be a driving force behind perl development. I guess it
would not be too bad to have spaces there (per unpack) but I wonder
when its time for the behemoth tail to stop wagging its dog.

--tom

(construing <emacs> to be a singular noun)

Re: Spaces in prototypes and Emacs [ In reply to ]

ilya at math

Nov 26, 1995, 1:02 PM

Post #3 of 3 (299 views)

Permalink

Tom Christiansen writes:
>
> >This is very unfortunate for Emacs since having
>
> I am more than merely slightly unfond of emacs's parsing idiotsynchrasies
> continuing to be a driving force behind perl development. I guess it
> would not be too bad to have spaces there (per unpack) but I wonder
> when its time for the behemoth tail to stop wagging its dog.
>

The question is that of mythical man-months. My request is filed, the
solution is accepted, and counteracted by an offer to implement it. As
you may guess, I rejected the honor.

So if anyone is interested in changing Emacs's syntax engine to
recognize text properties `syntax' and `syntax-table', give me (or/and
rms) know. I will forward the you our email exchange.

Ilya