[fpc-devel] Project Idea: Mini-FPC

[Skybuck Flying]

Well I hope the pascal language is updated so semicolons become required for 
end's.

Take a long hard look at the P4 or P5 code and you will find a lot of if 
then else statements with wrong identation as well, this makes it somewhat 
hard to understand which else belongs to which if, it also makes it somewhat 
more hard to fix the situation by adding begin end blocks and it makes the 
code less suited for editing which is a bit drawback.

But always writing end; the code is more easily editable because it will 
become more robust.

In the example you posted if an else is pasted right after the end it would 
be valid while that was perhaps not it's intention... and it would confuse 
the rest as well.

I think P4 and P5 code is a perfect example of confusion and such ;)

Now one could claim that it's my lack of understanding of the pascal 
language.

But then ask yourself on question: Why does Delphi's source beautifier have 
problems with it ? Why does Jedi Code Formatter have problems with it ?

Apperently I am not the only pascal/delphi programmer in the world which 
gets confused by the P4 and P5 code ! ;)

Definelty warrents further investigation into all this matter ;) not only 
the source beautifiers by free pascal and delphi compiler itself as well.

Here is an very nice experiment for you pascal compiler writes.

Do as I say and make end without a semicolon an error if it's not followed 
by an else.

This will probably immediatly make apperent where there are all kinds of 
sloppy programming sections in P4 and P5.

Also code like:

if a < b then SomeStatement
    else
        SomeStatement

if b > a then SomeOtherStatement
   else AnotherStatement

^ Notice not a single semicolon

Apperently it's completely legal to write code like this... but I consider 
it quite bad.

Bye,
  Skybuck.