Re: [PATCH] Unicode Lisp reader escapes

[Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>]

 Ar an chéad lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Richard Stallman: 

 >     > I think it would be better to put an explicit terminator into
 >     > the construct.  Perhaps #.  So you would write "\u123#As I walked"
 > 
 >     There is already the possibility to use `\ ' as a terminator.
 > 
 > That is true.  The worry is that people might forget and run the
 > unicode constant together with the following text.  People might not
 > remember to use `\ ' when it is needed, if they usually don't need it.
 > 
 > But it is no great disaster to make such an error--it will be obvious
 > when you see the output.  So perhaps there's no need to do anything
 > to avoid the problem.

One problem with that is that people writing portable code have never had
the option of assuming (equal "\ " ""). Now, of course, you may prefer that
people not write portable code; but it’s still a problem, because people
will try.

 > One other question occurs to me. In the Unicode branch, doesn't \x do
 > this job? If so, \u would be redundant once we merge in that code. It
 > would have no lasting purpose.

I addressed that in my first mail, and I quote: 

“Why not wait until the Unicode branch is merged? Well, that won’t solve the
problem either; people naturally want their code to be as compatible as
possible, so they will avoid the assumption that the integer-to-character
mapping is Unicode compatible as long as there are editors in the wild for
which that is not true. If this is integrated a good bit before the Unicode
branch is (which is what I would like), it will mean people can use this
syntax (which most modern programming languages have already, and which
people use) and be sure it’s compatible years before what would otherwise be
the case.” 

-- 
Aidan Kehoe, http://www.parhasard.net/