On Sep 9, 2011, at 6:29 PM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Tue, 6 Sep 2011, Frank Barknecht wrote:
I'm not sure what "appears in the patch" should mean. It definitly
means that numercial-symbol selectors don't get shown and cannot be
written into a patch, so you cannot use them in the editor where
"real" selectors should be written, like in [route]: There's no
[route "15"] in Pd, where "15" should mean a numerical symbol.I proposed such a syntax in the past... 2006-2007, I think.
It would take care of :
"15" = \15 but looks less weird
"" = really an empty string (just like the &s_ given by A_DEFSYMBOL,
that you nearly can't produce otherwise)"hello world" = hello\ \ \ \ \ \ world but less annoying to type.
"hello " = hello\ \ \ but at least it wouldn't be confusing like
ending a symbol by backslash space and then immediately using a
space separator.";" = ;
"," = ,
but it means :
" would be syntax error
" would mean double-quote char
""" too
Those conventions are very similar to Tcl and Bash.
However, I don't know what "$1" would do, nor why it's a good idea,
or a bad idea.Also, how do we quote ";" when writing to a file ? a literal
semicolon in a messagebox would be written as ;, which has to be
written \; in the file, but if a user were to write ";", what will
the messagebox write to the .pd file ?
I agree the "" style would match other languages and things quite well
and might be clearer, but breaks backwards compatibility, though not
horribly. We could start with the \ method, and if that is too
painful, add a "" method. They would be complimentary. Certainly
most syntaxes that have "" also have \ escaping. Internet search
input is one notable exception.
.hc
"It is convenient to imagine a power beyond us because that means we
don't have to examine our own lives.", from "The Idols of
Environmentalism", by Curtis White