[redirected to haskell-cafe] Ashley Yakeley wrote (on 30-05-02 03:18 -0700):

At 2002-05-30 02:54, Lennart Augustsson wrote:

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If you look at C (& offspring), it's not the {;} that makes the code readable, it's the indentation that does. So why not acknowledge that?

In C, the indentation is an important visual clue, but there are many different indentation styles.

I think there are not so many different _indentation_ styles. The differences seem mostly to revolve around where to put _the braces_. And one might argue that the reason for that is precisely that it's so arbitrary, since the indentation is the main visual clue to structure anyway. Personally, I always try to factor out arbitrariness from my programs. I think layout does the same thing for syntax.

If you're used to braces, complicated Haskell expressions with layout look confusing, since it's not immediately clear which indentation style the layout rules are trying to enforce.

If you're used to C, then layout and indentation will be the least of your difficulties when you start using Haskell... Anyway, I have the feeling that, for every person on this list who complains about layout being unintuitive, there are 10 people who would say the opposite. Shall we take a poll? -- Frank Atanassow, Information & Computing Sciences, Utrecht University Padualaan 14, PO Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands Tel +31 (030) 253-3261 Fax +31 (030) 251-379