Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH] Always quote symbols starting or ending with a colon to ensure readability

[Peter Bex]

On Sun, May 26, 2019 at 09:05:37PM +0200, address@hidden wrote:
> >
> > The attached patch ensures we write such identifiers as |:type-tests:|
> > regardless of keyword style.  This way, it can also be read by any
> > program, even if it uses a different keyword style than the writer.
> >
> 
> Ugh... How ugly. Is there no way around this? The "|" are only necessary
> in "readable" mode, right?

What do you mean by readable mode?  If you mean that it's only needed
when you want to later use READ to read back the expression, then yes.
For regular display it doesn't matter.

I wouldn't know of any way around it.  Basically for the same reason we
read a keyword as foo: and then write it as #:foo.  That's equally "ugly"
but nobody ever complained about it as far as I know.

I don't see how it's a huge problem; one wouldn't need to write such
symbols very often, and usually you have suffix style enabled, so the
pipes are only unnecessary when the symbol only starts with a colon.
When there's a colon on both ends or on the right side, you _have_ to
pipe-quote it anyway, and we do already.

Cheers,
Peter

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