Re: [Caml-list] single-line comment request

["Daniel M. Albro" <albro@humnet.ucla.edu>]

	But ## is so *ugly*!  It just doesn't look OCaml-ic, since # is
already the object-call operator.  What other possibilities are there?
How about %, %%, --, ' ?  If "--" isn't used it might be nice.

Chris Hecker wrote:
> 
>> > Actually, just to fuel the fire, it's not just stylish.  Single-line
>> > comments are sometimes easier to work with programmatically
>> Not noticeably in my experience.
> 
> 
> Hmm, well I guess I have different experiences from you on this front.
> 
> This is starting to become a "you don't need that" argument.  The 
> backwards compatibility argument is the only one you've given that has 
> any actual technical objectivity behind it, and it's pretty weak because 
> almost every iteration of caml isn't backwards compatible (if not in 
> core language, then library functions, etc.) and I want it that way and 
> think they should accelerate that.  Much better to get changes out of 
> the way now than later when caml is more popular.
> 
> As for editor macros and parsing, I'm familiar with my editor, thanks.  
> The point is you need to write no macros when doing a lot of operations 
> with single line comments, versus having to write macros to handle 
> things as easily with multiline.  That indicates a complexity for 
> operations that you don't seem to acknowledge.  If you're at a different 
> editor and don't have your macros, who's better off?  And, the macros 
> are nontrivial in the cases of mixed length code and nested comments and 
> whatnot.  A lot of operations are just more complicated with bracketed 
> comments since you have to keep state [that standard regexs can't 
> handle].  I don't see how you can argue the contrary.
> 
> There's really no downside that I can see to supporting them besides 
> minor backwards compatibility (but hey, if you want to port back, just 
> write an editor macro to convert them since you argue they're so easy! 
> :), using another token, and somebody has to go implement them.  There 
> are many minor upsides, including a bunch that haven't been listed like 
> avoiding questions about this topic on the list, and matching people's 
> intuition from C++, etc.  It seems like a clear win to me.
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
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