On 20 July 2015 at 14:46, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower@microsoft.com> wrote:
So, macros basically? The real ones, not #define.
What's wrong with special casing text strings (a little bit more than they already have been)?
I've wished for a cleaner shell command invocation syntax many more times than I've wished for easier string formatting, but I *have* wished for both. Talking to the scientific Python folks, they've often wished for a cleaner syntax to create deferred expressions with the full power of Python's statement level syntax. Explicitly named macros could deliver all three of those, without the downsides of implicit globally installed macros that are indistinguishable from regular syntax. By contrast, the string prefix system is inherently cryptic (being limited to single letters only) and not open to extension and experimentation outside the reference interpreter. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia