From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!skynet.be!skynet.be!ossa.telenet-ops.be!nmaster.kpnqwest.net!nreader2.kpnqwest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Ancient Times (Was: Re: introduction to Lisp...) References: <63637457.0204040727.798c0862@posting.google.com> <3CB08CFE.97DF9311@enterprise.net> <3cb83675$1_2@Usenet.com> <3cb8cdee_5@Usenet.com> <3cb99abb$1_9@Usenet.com> <3cb9d299$1_6@Usenet.com> <3cba4062_2@Usenet.com> <87lmbpwu31.fsf_-_@photino.sid.rice.edu> Mail-Copies-To: never From: Erik Naggum Message-ID: <3227863232118899@naggum.net> Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 34 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 12:40:32 GMT X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@KPNQwest.no X-Trace: nreader2.kpnqwest.net 1018874432 193.71.199.50 (Mon, 15 Apr 2002 14:40:32 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 14:40:32 MET DST Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:31728 * Rahul Jain | Did people actually use underscores as word separators back then? I | thought the underscore was a very rare character to have before ASCII was | in nearly universal use. The underscore is quite young. The character in that position in ASCII and its precursors has a long history, but generally, _ was a back-arrow and ^ was an up-arrow. _ has come to replace blank, which many have rendered as an underscore with very short vertical bars on each side. Primitive syntax descriptions have a serious problem with whitespace, so they claim that a-b is three tokens, a_b one. This arbitrariness is frustrating to people who know better. OfCoursePeopleWhoWriteLikeThisDoNotSeeTheProblem. | Or is this just an attempt to make the C programmers taking the class | feel better? It is probably a feebleminded attempt to learn real syntaxes in stages, slow adaptability or something. I mean, no textbooks on Lisp or Scheme or any other sufficiently similar language uses _ in identifiers, so this is an independent creation of the student who is unable to observe what others are doing. Generally, I consider poor indentation and _ in symbol names a clear sign that the requestor is more lost that I would consider it in my interest to try to rectify. But more generally, space should be a valid character in identifiers, and with ISO 8859 and Unicode, it can be: just use the non-breaking-space. I think this really _rules_ for extra super-high readability. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief. Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg