Re: C-style condition expressions

Lex Spoon wrote:
> Andrew Lentvorski <bsder <at> allcaps.org> writes:
>> As an aside, what stops ":" from being an operator?  This seems like a
>> larger problem of being unable to add reasonable syntax
>> extensions. Although, that's probably treading close to Lisp-macro
>> territory.
> 
> ":" means that you are about to see a type, e.g.:
> 
>    3 + 4
>    (3:int) + 4
>    (3 : int) + 4
> 
> 
> Switching worlds between types and values is highly significant.
> Reusing ":" for anything else would seem at least as confusing as your
> description of reusing "!" .
> 
> 
> Other ideas?
> 
>    bool ? truecase _____  falsecase
> 
> 
> What should go in the blank?  Or maybe the ? should be changed as
> well, if the C implication is just too strong?  Here's a funny
> one:
> 
> 
>    bool -> truecase !-> falsecase
> 
> 
> Other ideas?
> 
> 
> -Lex
> 
> 

I really like the question mark, seems quite intuitive to me.

":" or "!" is used to separate alternatives, so:
"/" is sometimes used to indicate an alternative, like in "Mr/Ms ____" 
for example. Unfortunately, "/" is used as the division operator and 
"//" as a comment intro, so maybe some other sequence containing it, e.g.,

well ? yes -/- no

but I can't think of one I prefer over "!".

BTW, is backslash "\" reserved or used somewhere other than escape 
sequences? Maybe one of these:

well ?  yes \ no
well ?  yes \\ no

Ingo