Re: [Caml-list] syntactic detail

[David House <dhouse@janestreet.com>]

On 02/08/2012 02:39 PM, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> People. Please. Tell me you are *not* arguing over underscores in
> numeric literals !

This is not totally academic. I have come across the exact bug I 
describe. It was painful.

>  > But it hides bugs, because if you see 10_000_0000 you are
>  > much more likely to think it is 10^7 than you are with 100000000,
>  > where you are likely to be careful and take your time.
>
> So your point is : it is dangerous because it is clearer. I also
> recommend we forbid comments, since:
> - they can be abused, even by mistake, to make code *harder* to read
> - removing them will force people to read code more carefully

Allowing underscores is definitely better than not allowing them, since 
it makes code clearer. I'd rather put up with the possibility of these 
bugs than remove the feature altogether. But seeing as we can remove the 
option for these bugs with a pretty easy-going syntax restriction, why 
not? (There is no such analogous restriction that would make comments 
more accurate.)

That being said, I do agree with the general sentiment that too many 
bytes have been wasted on this thread. I'll try to extricate myself from 
the debate and get on with something useful :)