[m-dev.] Commas considered optional

[Thomas Conway]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 10:36:22AM EST, Tyson Dowd wrote:
> On 29-Nov-2001, Ralph Becket <rafe at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> > p.s. The source code for the compiler includes some 270,000 commas.  If
> > you assume it takes 0.2s to type a comma (the real figure is probably
> > higher) then in excess of 15 working hours have been spent typing commas
> > in the compiler alone!
> 
> This is not the real cost.  The real cost comes when moving code around
> on a line-oriented basis, and forgetting to add a comma when you add
> goals to a conjunction, or remove a comma when you remove goals from 
> a conjunction.  This leads to a syntax error, which you have to
> understand, find, fix, and recompile...

If I've spent more than 1 hour fixing that kind of error since I
started programming in Mercury in 1993/4 I'd be surprised. Such
syntax errors are usually very quick to fix. Missing `.' errors
are much more difficult to track down, and would be worse if
commas are optional.

-- 
  Thomas Conway )O+
 <conway at cs.mu.oz.au>       499 User error! Replace user, and press any key.
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