. for concatenation #4
Description
Like C, L concatenates adjacent string literals.
However, where C provides a string concatenation function, at the moment, L provides an operator for string concatenation: .
Overloading . in this way (so that the whitespace around it is syntactically meaningful) causes a few pain points.
E.g., where -> (which, at least in C, is equivalent to . but dereferencing its left argument before access) can be spaced however the user would like but . cannot be. Or, what happens when whitespace exists on one side of . but not the other?
I would propose one of two things:
- Use an alternative operator (e.g.,
$$,><or##; the latter might be good since C programmers already associate it with concatenation of a sort). - Do not require an operator for string concatenation at all; L already allows for concatenation of string literals, why not just concatenate all adjacent strings?