[erlang-questions] Newbie question about line endings

[Fred Hebert]

The simple answer is 'because Prolog did it that way first'. I have written
http://ferd.ca/on-erlang-s-syntax.html to give 2-3 different options on how
to read Erlang's line endings in a way that makes sense. Note that
considering them 'line ending' is a mistake in the first place. ',' and ';'
are separators (they go in-between expressions or constructs, not after
them). Only '.' terminates 'forms', which are function declarations and
module attributes '-KeyWord(Args)', and expressions in the shell.

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 2:21 PM, August Schwartzwald <
august.schwartzwald@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I started to learn Erlang about a month ago. I really like it and think
> that with some more practice it will become a both unique and powerful tool
> in my growing box of programming languages. However, there is one thing
> about it that I find extremely annoying: The line endings.
> I currently know 5 programing languages, they have either 0 (python) or 1
> way to end lines (usually the ';' character). Erlang totally stands out
> here and requires that lines are ended in one of 4 different ways.
>
> Did some googling without finding any good reason to why the language
> works in this way. Can anyone here explain this?
>
> Thanks
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20111221/b74bbb2f/attachment.htm>