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Re: square brackets in the draft

• Subject: Re: square brackets in the draft
• From: Doug du Boulay <ddb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 03:48:25 +0100 (BST)

>
> If the only problem that square brackets solve is to provide a more
> flexible way to delimit multi-line strings, why can't we just lift the
> single line restriction on single and/or double quotes? Why introduce
> yet another way of delimiting strings?  For example, why not simply
> delimit between quotes the nested bracket string so that the parser
> stage doesn't have to care about counting brackets?  Even if nested
> brackets are important for STAR work, I don't see yet that a case has
> been made for unconditionally accepting them into CIFs.  What do we
> win?
Hi James,
I am not certain, but I think there was some semantic issue about white space 
preservation involved, to the effect that whitspace may or may not be 
preserved in the existing constructs, but it would be enforced with
bracket notation. There doesn`t seem to be any mention of this in the spec 
though. Another intention could be to permit vector matrix 
and list type constructs in the future.
Maybe it should come with a warning not to use it yet...


Doug

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