| Dan Nagle 2007-11-25, 8:13 am |
| Hello,
Gary Scott wrote:
> glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
>
[color=darkred]
>
> Fairly minor, you still have existing literals processed exactly as
> expected. Special processing only by application of special syntax.
I think control characters and graphic characters are rather different.
Graphic characters may be displayed via a single graphic in source text.
Control characters cannot. Being capable of being a part of source code
in a one-to-one way, seems to me to be fairly fundamental.
A general substitution procedure means to take one set of graphic
characters and replace them by another set of graphic characters
when they appear in a third set of graphic characters. That's rather
different from processing control characters.
Fortran doesn't handle control characters in any systematic way.
I think that's a shortcoming of Fortran, but I've lost that battle
every time I've tried to do something about it.
> I wasn't intending to limit to compile time only. This type of
> substitution already exists in many products I use. It is extremely
> useful. Yes, it would require some run-time support. Come on guys,
> show a little imagination.
A programmer may already use the c_<cc> (where <cc> names a control
character) constants. They may be used to insert the most frequently
used control characters into graphic strings as needed.
Defining a new category of character is a major undertaking,
it's not a matter of a lack of imagination. And a proposed syntax
doesn't change that. What, exactly, are the semantics to be supported
by the proposed syntax? That is, what, exactly are the semantics
of the new category of character?
--
Dan Nagle
Purple Sage Computing Solutions, Inc.
|