patch applied (haskell-prime-status): proposal: remove string gaps

[Simon Marlow]

Henrik Nilsson wrote:
>  > Mon Mar 31 15:26:03 PDT 2008  Simon Marlow <simonmarhaskell at gmail.com>
>  >  * proposal: remove string gaps
> 
> Hm. This has escaped me.

Not surprising - it wasn't discussed anywhere else, I just thought I 
should bring it up as a possibility to consider.

> I don't find the rationale as documented on the Wikipage
> 
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/RemoveStringGaps
> 
> very convincing at all. I've thus added a few more cons:
> 
>     * string gaps are sometimes really helpful for
>       formatting/pretty printing code
>       neatly; the ++ alternative often necessecitates additional
>       bracketing

I can't say I've ever run into that, but I can see how it might be an issue.

>     * the simplification of the lexical syntax is very minor
> 
>     * arguably, the syntax highlighting ought to be fixed as that's what
>       at fault, not the language as such

The point was that if we can make simplifications that make the life of 
tool writers easier, then all other things being equal we should do so.

I wonder if I should suggest removing all those strange ascii esacpe 
sequences next...

Cheers,
	Simon