[Scilab-users] Exclamation mark in variable names

[Rafael Guerra]

Another two cents.
Allowing a leading exclamation mark in variable names seems to be, IMHO, a bad idea because (1) most computer languages do not seem to allow it and (2) some when encountering it, will interpret as logical negation.

Regards,
Rafael

From: users [mailto:users-bounces at lists.scilab.org] On Behalf Of Samuel Gougeon
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2018 5:14 PM
To: Users mailing list for Scilab <users at lists.scilab.org>
Subject: Re: [Scilab-users] Exclamation mark in variable names

Le 27/05/2018 à 16:30, Wozai a écrit :

Dear Samuel,



my point is, it wasn't possible to execute "!A=1" in Scilab 5.x (without prepending

a space) and IMHO one should really *improve* the situation in Scilab 6,

rather than just restoring the status quo.

Thank you Wozai for having confirmed my reading of your messages.

What Jens and i see is that Scilab 6 has not kept a status quo: by removing "!" from allowed characters, and by not fixing this, Scilab 6 is downgraded now for almost 3 years it is released. Unfortunately, this is not a status quo.

I definitively agree that improving Scilab is necessary. This is why i am involved in it. But i definitely disagree about the fact that what is considered as an improvement or a downgrade is the decision of one person or a very few people just declaring that "This is better than existing features. It must be changed!" (with a frequent trailing exclamation mark).

Other users than you and me, more numerous than you alone, could easily consider that keeping the usage of "!" as the history call is preferable, because they use to use it in other environments, and then would consider this change as a regression, not an improvement.

You seem to consider that using very occasionally a leading space to address a variable is really a big deal. But how many coders name preferably their variables with a leading "!" such that having to prepend a space actually becomes a big deal? I am sorry, but in all the external codes i had to work on for 20 years, variables with a leading "!" were rare enough that i don't remember having met a single one.

The usual way to propose an improvement is to post a wish on Bugzilla. Yours is welcome!

I let Clement pushing the fix for the parser, and i hope it will be straightforwardly merged.

I will wait 2-3 weeks before documenting the history recall and CTRL+Space completion
features in the Console page. If within this time it is decided to change for ":", the page won't
have to be possibly updated afterwards.

Samuel
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