Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ukma!uflorida!novavax!weiner
From: weiner@novavax.UUCP (Bob Weiner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Eiffel cleanup #5: The character set
Message-ID: <1756@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jan 90 01:15:17 GMT
References: <236@eiffel.UUCP>
Organization: Motorola Inc.
Lines: 22
In-reply-to: bertrand@eiffel.UUCP's message of 21 Jan 90 03:39:13 GMT

In article <236@eiffel.UUCP> bertrand@eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer) writes:

   Then, the backslash loses its special role as an escape character in
   character and string constants. It is replaced by the exclamation mark.

If this change were optional for international programmers it would be
fine but if it is required of all programmers it is unacceptable.  This
is the equivalent of all of the personal computer vendors that create
their own regular expression syntax.  They add no new functionality but
change the character set so that the largest body programmers who use
regular expressions (UNIX programmers) frequently must relearn something
they already understand well.  The backslash as a character quote has
stood the test of time for usage, readability, etc. on UNIX systems.  If
UNIX International has not seen fit to eliminate its usage, there is no
reason that such should be done in Eiffel.

Just add some mechanism in the character mapping file that lets
programmers use exclamation marks instead of backquotes if they want.

-- 
Bob Weiner, Motorola, Inc.,   USENET:  ...!gatech!uflorida!novavax!weiner
(407) 364-2087