`string`

"Walter" <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:bfvihp$19sq$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> That's what I'm trying to find!
>
> "Matthew Wilson" <matthew@stlsoft.org> wrote in message news:bfv9m8$118q$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> > LOL. What isn't? :)
> >
> > "Walter" <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:bfv2s8$ql4$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> > >
> > > "Matthew Wilson" <matthew@stlsoft.org> wrote in message news:bfv0or$oeh$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> > > > Here's an unpopular thought: why not use @"string" and be consistent
> > with
> > > > C#? Easier on the brain even if it doffs one's cap to M$
> > >
> > > It's aesthetically unpleasing.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>

> That will work. But an empty string would be """""". Hmm. How about

Yeah, but as there is absolutely no point in using the WYSIWYG syntax for empty strings, I doubt this will have any practical problems :)

-fg

`string` seems good. It doesn't really matter to me. I'm fine with the way it is now, too.

"Walter" <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:bfu9kp$3f1$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Currently, there are 3 kinds of string literals:
> 'string' : wysiwyg strings
> "string" : escaped strings
> \ : single character strings
>
> There is no character literal syntax; 1 character long strings are implicitly converted to character literals based on context.
Unfortunately,
> this leads to ambiguities with no reasonable way out (other than crafting arbitrary and confusing rules).
>
> So, I've been thinking of going back to the C way and having ' ' for character literals. That means that wysiwyg strings are left without a lexical syntax. Any ideas for something that would look nice? How about using back quotes ` `, or is that just too hard to distinguish in certain fonts? One thing to keep in mind is that wysiwyg strings are not going to
be
> used with nearly the same frequency as escaped strings, so the syntax can
be
> a bit less convenient for them.
>
> I'd like to use /string/, but that leads to too may lexical ambiguities.
>
> Some possibilities are:
> 1) prefixing the " with a letter or a character, as in:
>     W"string"
>     %"string"
>     !"string"
> 2) using a character not used in C, such as:
>     `string`
>     $string$
>     @string@
>     #string#
>
>

> 'string' : wysiwyg strings
> "string" : escaped strings

Should be as they are I think.

What about a basic like syntax? (flames to /dev/null :-)

char( ) || char(' ')
char(0x20)
char(\t)

Can of chourse be made less verbose by shortening to
chr() or c().

Just an idea.

Roald

Walter wrote:

> Currently, there are 3 kinds of string literals:
> 'string' : wysiwyg strings
> "string" : escaped strings
> \ : single character strings
> 
> There is no character literal syntax; 1 character long strings are
> implicitly converted to character literals based on context. Unfortunately,
> this leads to ambiguities with no reasonable way out (other than crafting
> arbitrary and confusing rules).

All implicit casting rules are arbitrary.  Incorrect even; the value of:

   ubyte a = 64;
   ubyte b = 16;
   ubyte c = a * b / b;

Should be zero by a strict reading of intention, not sixty-four.  I'm jiggy with it because its utility trumps its arbitrary and confusing rules in my book.  Likewise with preferring a function which takes a single character argument over a function which takes a string.

> So, I've been thinking of going back to the C way and having ' ' for
> character literals. That means that wysiwyg strings are left without a
> lexical syntax. Any ideas for something that would look nice? How about
> using back quotes ` `, or is that just too hard to distinguish in certain
> fonts? One thing to keep in mind is that wysiwyg strings are not going to be
> used with nearly the same frequency as escaped strings, so the syntax can be
> a bit less convenient for them.

Just a note.  The "`" character is not a back quote, it's a grave accent.  Like the tilde and circumflex accent (the caret), it was apparently originally intended as a character modifier, although I can't find any history on computer keyboard layout.  That's why it looks nothing like a quote character, and more like the window system has made a rendering error.

It's likely to be on every Romantic language's keyboard; you can look at their layouts at (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/keyboards.aspx) using Internet Explorer only.  But I wouldn't use the symbol; I don't think the problem, even if I agreed that it exists, merits the use of a new symbol.  There hasn't been a new symbol in C in thirty years.  C++ didn't add any new symbols.  This conservatism can get out-of-hand, but unless if there is absolutely no way to do otherwise I don't think there should be new symbols.

> I'd like to use /string/, but that leads to too may lexical ambiguities.
> 
> Some possibilities are:
> 1) prefixing the " with a letter or a character, as in:
>     W"string"
>     %"string"
>     !"string"
> 2) using a character not used in C, such as:
>     `string`
>     $string$
>     @string@
>     #string#

Dollar, "at", and octothorpe are all language- or culture-specific.  I see pretty good keyboard layout coverage though.

"Walter" <walter@digitalmars.com> escreveu na mensagem news:bfu9kp$3f1$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Currently, there are 3 kinds of string literals:
> 'string' : wysiwyg strings
> "string" : escaped strings
> \ : single character strings
>
> There is no character literal syntax; 1 character long strings are implicitly converted to character literals based on context.
Unfortunately,
> this leads to ambiguities with no reasonable way out (other than crafting arbitrary and confusing rules).
>
> So, I've been thinking of going back to the C way and having ' ' for character literals. That means that wysiwyg strings are left without a lexical syntax. Any ideas for something that would look nice? How about using back quotes ` `, or is that just too hard to distinguish in certain fonts? One thing to keep in mind is that wysiwyg strings are not going to
be
> used with nearly the same frequency as escaped strings, so the syntax can
be
> a bit less convenient for them.
>
> I'd like to use /string/, but that leads to too may lexical ambiguities.
>
> Some possibilities are:
> 1) prefixing the " with a letter or a character, as in:
>     W"string"
>     %"string"
>     !"string"
> 2) using a character not used in C, such as:
>     `string`
>     $string$
>     @string@
>     #string#

Hi,

    Couldn't we use a symbol for character literals, like other languages,
like #a or $a for the letter "a"? It would probably be simpler, and we could
keep '' and "" for strings. Also \ would be character literals, instead of
single character strings.

    Best regards,
    Daniel Yokomiso.

"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
 - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

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"Fabian Giesen" <rygNO@SPAMgmx.net> wrote in message news:bg05b6$1tnm$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> > That will work. But an empty string would be """""". Hmm. How about
>
> Yeah, but as there is absolutely no point in using the WYSIWYG syntax for empty strings, I doubt this will have any practical problems :)

You do have a point.

"Matthew Wilson" <matthew@stlsoft.org> wrote in message news:bg02ei$1qsh$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> > With all those syntax highlighting text editors out there, I don't think it's much of a problem setting special colours for the string to make it more obvious for those with small/dense displays, no?
>
> Excellent point

But when people write books on D, they'll be using monochrome text. Most people still use monochrome printers to print source code.

"Matthew Wilson" <matthew@stlsoft.org> wrote in message news:bg02ej$1qsh$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> `string`

The three frontrunners are at the moment:

`string`
"""string"""
r"string"

Walter wrote:
> "Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16@deming-os.org> wrote in message
> news:bfuc2b$5ck$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>>What about double double quotes for wysiwyg?
>>
>>""string"" : wysiwyg string
>>
>>I don't really like that syntax, but I think it's better than any of the
>>other alternatives proposed so far.  I like the fact that it uses a
>>quote character to denote a string, rather than some other, arbitrarily
>>selected character.
> 
> 
> It's a good idea, but it conflicts with using "" to denote an empty string.
> I thought of using "'string'", but it looks too weird <g>.
> 
>

Python uses r"string" for raw (wysiwyg) strings.

C# uses @"string".  This is probably easier to parse, as @ isn't used anywhere else in the language. (as far as I know)