Re: [Bashburn-info] Question on Language files

[Markus K. <mar...@on...>]

Steven W. Orr wrote:
> On Sunday, Aug 31st 2008 at 14:39 -0000, quoth Nick Warne:
>
> =>I just noticed a lot of the English Lang files text is wrapped in
> =>singles quotes '  whereas most other languages use double quotes "
> =>
> =>Why is this?  Does it matter?  Should there be a convention anyway if
> =>either work (as they seem to do)?
> =>
> =>I can clean up if desired tomorrow (pub time now ;-) )
> =>
> =>Nick
>
> There's nothing wrong with how things are written. using any of the 
> working quoting systems. I personally use a style that I developed called 
> The Steven Orr System of Minimal Shell Quoting. (patent pending) :-(
>
> Anyhoo, it looks like this:
>
> foo=Hello					# Case 1
> bar='Woops. I slipped.'				# Cabe B
> baz="I like to say $foo when I meet peopls."	# Case iii
>
> so what you have here is three distinct situations:
>
> In case 1, the value in question is a s single word. There is no need to 
> quote anything. You are allowed to use both single or double quotes, but 
> but not using anything, the reader of the code immediately sees that there 
> is a value that is composed of just one word.
>
> Case 2 is obviously a multi-word value with no variable expansion. No 
> double quotes needed. Yes, "s are legal, but I can look at a long string 
> and see right away that there is no variable expansion going on.
>
> Case 3 tells me right away that there are variables afoot.
>
> So you asked about a convention? There it is.
>
> Do you hate it? Do you love it?
>
>   
Steven, yes I personally like your system too - but with one exception 
that I prefer to write "case 1" like:

foo='Hello'

or:

foo="Hello"

This may not be better in technically terms. But it keeps a routine to quote strings and one can see with one quick look that it is a string. (Ok, maybe I have a little touch of lisp programming language, where normally strings are quoted, otherwise it is seen as a symbol).

;-)