digit groups

[Aaron Denney]

On 2006-10-26, Jon Fairbairn <jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 2006-10-25 at 20:57-0000 Aaron Denney wrote:
>> On 2006-10-25, Jon Fairbairn <jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>> > No. A small alteration to the lexical syntax for the sake of
>> > improved readability seems perfectly justifiable as long as
>> > it doesn't make the lexical syntax /significantly/ more
>> > complicated or harder to learn.
>> 
>> Sure.  But some of us don't find it terribly readable. 
>
> I'm not sure what you are saying here. Assessing readability
> by introspection is terribly unreliable. Unfamiliarity with
> the presentation of numbers with underlines is likely to
> make them feel a bit awkward to begin with, but habituation
> is likely to change that.

Fair enough, I don't actually find it less readable, merely quite ugly.
I might indeed get used to it.

>> I think the ~~ operator hack gets 90% of the "benefit" for
>> those who want it.
>
> I thought my earlier message adequately demonstrated that it
> does /not/.

You demonstrated some corner cases that weren't convincing at all.

> Another case: if you change “square
> 123479010987” to “square 123_479_010_987” to improve
> readability it still means the same thing. If you change it
> to “square 123~~479~~010~~987” it doesn't.

This is a bit more convincing.

-- 
Aaron Denney
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