Syntax

I seem to be on a roll with syntactic concerns lately, which is not where I typically spend most of my time. Today’s issue is, at least, more unusual than stylistic preferences regarding semicolons and significant indentation. This post explores the issues that arise when teaching the compiler to be agnostic as to whether it is parsing a value expression or a type expression. A value expression computes some typed value when evaluated:

The last post focused narrowly on evaluating various techniques for semi-colon inference, thereby enabling a program to successfully compile even when the programmer omits statement-ending semicolons. This post broadens this theme, looding at how the compiler can take advantage of significant indentation when handling block inference and multi-line string literals. I wander into this topic knowing that for many programmers, compiler support for significant indentation is troubling and uncomfortable. They prefer the explicit clarity of required semi-colons to end statements and curly braces to delimit blocks.

Many programming languages require that statements end with a semicolon. Some languages, such as Javascript, Go, Kotlin, Swift, Scala and Lua, make this requirement optional. Although a semicolon may be specified, it is not required to terminate a statement. This post explores the underlying rules various languages use to make semicolon inference possible. It also articulates the arguments for and against a language offering support for it.1 The Challenge The semicolon inference rules would be simple if every statement fit on a single line.