[m-dev.] Commas considered optional

Peter Schachte schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU
Fri Nov 30 23:02:47 AEDT 2001


On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 10:36:22AM +1100, 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...

Aren't there vim macros for this?  I've got code that handles this correctly
for emacs.

-- 
Peter Schachte              In a democratic time culture, everyone's time is
schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU        valueable and no one's time is any more
www.cs.mu.oz.au/~schachte/  expendable than another's.
Phone: +61 3 8344 9166          -- Jeremy Rifkin 
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