Tuple Format?

[Grant Edwards]

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 19:36:11 -0500, warrenk at Zem.Zem <warrenk at Zem.Zem> wrote:

>Isn't this concern about bracketing tuples a red herring?

I don't think so.

>Except for an empty tuple, tuples are defined by the comma.

"Except" is a Bad Thing when defining sytax.  Tuple syntax has
two "excepts":  

 1) Commas are used to construct tuples _except_ when they're
    empty.

 2) You put commas between tuple elements, except for the extra
    trialing comma with is optional (except for singletons).

Maybe that should be five [three, sir]... three "excepts."

>Parentheses are only needed to resolve ambiguities in argument
>lists,

There are those of who think that syntaxes with such
ambiguities could be improved.  Unfortunately the improvement
requires another set of delimiters, and we're fresh out.  I
don't think anybody would have come up with the current syntax
if there _was_ another set of delimiters laying unused on your
keyboard.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I always liked FLAG
                                  at               DAY!!
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