Re: digit groups

On 2006-10-26, Jon Fairbairn wrote:

On 2006-10-25 at 20:57-0000 Aaron Denney wrote:

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On 2006-10-25, Jon Fairbairn wrote:

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No. A small alteration to the lexical syntax for the sake of improved readability seems perfectly justifiable as long as it doesn't make the lexical syntax /significantly/ more complicated or harder to learn.

Sure. But some of us don't find it terribly readable.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. Assessing readability by introspection is terribly unreliable. Unfamiliarity with the presentation of numbers with underlines is likely to make them feel a bit awkward to begin with, but habituation is likely to change that.

Fair enough, I don't actually find it less readable, merely quite ugly. I might indeed get used to it.

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I think the ~~ operator hack gets 90% of the "benefit" for those who want it.

I thought my earlier message adequately demonstrated that it does /not/.

You demonstrated some corner cases that weren't convincing at all.

Another case: if you change “square 123479010987” to “square 123_479_010_987” to improve readability it still means the same thing. If you change it to “square 123~~479~~010~~987” it doesn't.

This is a bit more convincing. -- Aaron Denney -><-