Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Friday 29 June 2007 16:56:45 Robert C Fischer wrote:
>   
>> How would I write f - 1 to mean "one less than the value of f"?
>>     
>
> As:
>
>   f - 1
>
> The space before the digit means that it will not match this regexp.
>
> Or:
>
>   f-1
>
> The lack of a space before the "-" means that it will not match this regexp.
I think it's quite too hard to explain, and it leads you to make 
mistakes too easily.

By the way, I wonder how you could explain that to students learning the 
language...

What I think is that :
- whether they know nothing about programming : then they end up 
thinking it's quite too ugly...
- whether they already know something about programming : they would 
think that the language is ugly and stick to those they already know...

Anyways, I really wouldn't want that.
One should not have to spend ten years to learn a programming language, 
just because of such tricks.

--
Philippe Wang
  mail[at]philippewang.info