[fpc-devel] Some compiler changes...

[Thorsten Engler]

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> > The _ trick is widely used indeed, but imho those underscores make 
> > code slightly less readable and also less aesthetic.
> 
> Less readable than & ? What is the exact aesthetic ranking of 
> !@#$%^&*()_+ then? :-)

& is an proper escaping mechanism. Renaming the imported symbol with an _ is
a hack, and not a pretty one (IMHO, YMMV), as _ is a valid character in
identifiers so there might already be a symbol defined with the same name as
the one you want to give your renamed imported symbol. What then? You'll
have to further rename one of the 2. And that might conflict with something
else again and you could end up with a complete chain of renamed symbols.
Any renaming involving characters that are valid in identifiers just creates
the possibility for more conflicts. And if you are then looking at the
documentation or original source of whatever you imported and and what to
use it you have to figure out all the time what the new name of the symbols
is. On the other hand with a well defined escaping mechanism you use the
original symbol names as given, if there is a conflict you use the escape
operator. Always exactly the same. And looking at your code all the
identifiers match exactly with the source, documentation and examples of
whatever you imported.

Cheers,
Thorsten
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