Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!tektronix!tekcrl!tekchips!willc
From: willc@tekchips.TEK.COM (Will Clinger)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Blanks in symbol names (was Re: Readable names)
Message-ID: <3088@tekchips.TEK.COM>
Date: 25 Mar 88 04:21:44 GMT
References: <2318@bsu-cs.UUCP> <2835@enea.se> <1810@sics.se> <3156@fluke.COM> <22367@bbn.COM> <614@acf3.NYU.EDU>
Reply-To: willc@tekchips.UUCP (Will Clinger)
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 15
Summary: Common Lisp allows it

>>>Are there languages other than CORAL that allow blanks in symbol names?
>>Fortran, of course, since blanks are insignificant except inside
>>string literals.  
>Then there's the old Apple II BASIC (seems almost as old as FORTRAN :-)

Ah, but nothing beats Common Lisp, in which you can have a variable whose
name consists of nothing but a blank.  (You can write it as | | or as \ ,
but whether it prints in one of those ways or simply as a blank space
depends on how you've set the printing parameters.)  And you can have a
different variable whose name consists of two blanks.  And one whose name
consists of three blanks.  And, of course, you can have a variable whose
name consists of no characters at all.  :-(

William Clinger
Semantic Microsystems, Inc.