Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: help function (Waldek Hebisch)

[Martin Rubey]

Gabriel Dos Reis <address@hidden> writes:

> Martin Rubey <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> | Themos Tsikas <address@hidden> writes:
> | 
> | > I take the evolutionary approach: if it was A Good Idea it would have
> | > been copied by now.
> | 
> | Is this the evolutionary approach, or is it just a definition of "good
> | idea"?
> | 
> | I could imagine that just nobody in the surviving environments knew about
> | the idea.
> 
> The idea of using `close paren' or that of separating system commands in
> separate name space?

Neither - nor. I was referring to "evolutionary approach".  I think at times
(not particularly often), good ideas do not survive.

Mathematica uses

?foo   for )help foo

<<foo  for )lib foo and )read foo

!foo   for )sys foo

But since Mathematica does not allow either of ?, <<, ! as first char of an
identifier, they do not have the same problem, so using ")" as separator of
name spaces doesn't make any sense.  Aldor and Axiom allow all three, so ")" is
a natural choice.

Waldek wrote:

> Also, we have at least on bug report where closing parenthesis is user input
> is wrongly read as system command.

I didn't see this bug report, could you send me a reference, please.  Do you
think using another character to distinguish name spaces would be better
suited?  Or would you advocate getting rid of the distinction alltogether?

Martin