ojacot-descombes / dsharp Goto Github PK

As @gafter has suggested here, I've opened a new repo for D#. You are welcome to contribute to this new language.

Does this language idea have a future? Would you like to write code with this language, with less typing as in C#, but without having to re-learn everything about methods, arrays, extension methods, assignment compatibility, operator precedence and all the rest?

The language is line-oriented. Continuation lines are introduced with a back-tick ( ` ) and their indentation does not matter. Nested blocks have an indentation increased by 4 spaces.

Advantages: Line-orientation removes the need for semicolons and parentheses in many situations. Indentation sensitiveness allows to eliminate curly braces and block-end symbols. A line continuation character at the beginning of the line has a better visibility compared to a continuation character at a line end.

Line orientation enforces a unique style, unlike in C# where you can have a unique statement in an if-statement on the same line, indented on the next line, enclosed in braces, on the same line, first brace on the same line, braces indented, not indented etc., etc., etc...

Example:

if a < 100 && b < 100 &&
`  c < 100 && d < 100
    WriteLine("They are all less than 100")
else
    WriteLine("Some guy is too big")

Example of alignment. A back-tick indicates a continuation line:

while i < a.Length &&
`     a[i] == null
    i++

I expect that the IDE will provide visual hints like lines or indentation based background coloring:

We need a syntax notation. Since D# will be line-oriented and (most likely) white-space sensitive I suggest using EBNF, but in a line-oriented and white-space sensitive manner, allowing us to express the D# grammar easily, without the need for end-of-line tokens and indentation tokens.

Example:

IfStatement =
    "if" Expression
        StatementSequence
    { "elsif" Expression
        StatementSequence }
    [ "else" Expression
        StatementSequence ]
;