From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id q18Ep3U3032328 for ; Wed, 8 Feb 2012 15:51:03 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AqsBAKiKMk8machzl2dsb2JhbABDrT+CTQEBAQEBCBYHO4FyAQEEAThAARALGAkWDwkDAgECAUUGDQEHAQGHeLlZi0sBBwIhBgELAQgFAwMJBQwCDIJyGQQDDAMUBYRFBKgK X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.73,383,1325458800"; d="scan'208";a="130593559" Received: from mx2.janestreet.com (HELO nyc-dmz-mxout2.janestreet.com) ([38.105.200.115]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA; 08 Feb 2012 15:50:57 +0100 Received: from nyc-qsv-mail1.delacy.com ([172.25.22.57]) by nyc-dmz-mxout2.janestreet.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1Rv8rI-0003e7-Eg; Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:50:56 -0500 Received: from ldn-qws-011.delacy.com ([172.23.133.111]) by nyc-qsv-mail1.delacy.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1Rv8rI-0004Ee-8G; Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:50:56 -0500 Message-ID: <4F328BCF.9030902@janestreet.com> Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:50:55 +0000 From: David House User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:9.0) Gecko/20111222 Thunderbird/9.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Gabriel Scherer CC: oliver , =?windows-1252?Q?Matej_Ko=9A=ED?= =?windows-1252?Q?k?= <5764c029b688c1c0d24a2e97cd764f@gmail.com>, caml-list@inria.fr References: <4F326EA6.20900@gmail.com> <4F32741C.4040501@janestreet.com> <20120208133926.GC1823@siouxsie> <4F327CBF.4030005@janestreet.com> <20120208135818.GG1823@siouxsie> <4F3282B1.1050205@janestreet.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Caml-list] syntactic detail 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 :)