Per 5.97 4.2, semicolon is a delimiter, and a significant character in
both end-of line and datum comments. But this character also ends the
inline hex escape sequence used in strings and, more troublesomely,
identifiers. This choice will make Scheme-sensitive text editor modes
quite awkward to implement.
Hubba hubba;this is a comment
Hubba hu\xbb;and this is not a comment
I suggest that another character, vertical style (U+007C), be used to
end inline hex escapes. Furthermore, I would suggest that the sequence
beginning an inline hex escape be changed to match the ending character,
bracket-style, and that the character constant syntax be changed to
match as well.
So, from 4.2,
<inline hex escape> -> \|<hex scalar value>|
<character> -> #\<any character>
-> #\<character name>
-> #\|<hex scalar value>|
in 4.2.4,
H\|65|llo Hello
in 4.2.6,
#\|FF| U+00FF
#\|03BB| U+03BB
in 4.2.7,
"\|41|bc" "Abc"
If the paired vertical styles are too reminiscent of the nonstandard
|identifier| syntax used by some Schemes, consider instead curly
brackets, which would work even better in my opinion.
H\{65}llo
#\{FF}
"\{41}bc"
etc.
For your consideration,
Ben
Received on Tue Jul 03 2007 - 16:12:28 UTC