Re:Avail Programming Language
by yorwba on Friday May 25, 2018 @04:31AM
(#17151659)
The language could include all of the possible expressions as valid alternatives. There are good reasons why most programming languages don't do that (it really helps comprehension if there's only one standardized way to do something), but if a language wants to be as close to English as possible, it will have to include the whole kitchen sink of synonyms. It might have to educate the users about the difference between a minus and a dash, though, if "1-10" and "1–10" (that's an en-dash) should evaluate to a number and a list, respectively.
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Re:Avail Programming Language
by markvangulik on Friday May 25, 2018 @01:29PM
(#17155983)
Some of the keywords and operators (punctuation) of Avail methods are “completely optional”, in that the caller’s choice to include it or not (or alternative prepositions in some cases) is solely to improve readability of the result. For example, the ordinary field-getter has the form “_’s??thing”. The double-question-mark should actually be a single Unicode character (I’m on my phone). The question-mark makes the “s” optional, so you can say “cat’s thing” or “Jess’ thing”. But there’s nothing stopping you from saying “cat’ thing”, other than the derisive laughter of your peers. :-)