I don’t mind whitespace dependent syntax, and i don’t think that blocks are a significant problem (macros might be).
But having different syntaxes für rust would has the potential to be extremly damaging to the language as a whole. I’m sure we would be better served by a cannocial rustformat tool.
Edit:
Just an idea: Change the style convention that closing braces are put on the end of a line LISP-style. That way, code becomes as terse as with a python-like syntax, but auto-formatting still works and no changes in the languages are required.
Example:
fn main() {
for _ in 0..4 {
println!("hello world");}}
vs.
fn main() {
for _ in 0..4 {
println!("hello world");
}
}
-1 I don’t see must point in introducing meaningful indents. I’m okay with braces as long as we have ways to write concise code inside them. I think having meaningful indents and curly braces would be confusing for new users reading the tutorials. I think it would put certain people off too, like those with C++, C# and Java backgrounds who weren’t won over by Python or Ruby.
Although I haven’t read all this thread, I do think it would be an interesting project to transpile a whitespace-sensitive dialect of Rust to ‘real Rust’ with full fidelity. Rust itself won’t do it though.
This thread is no longer appropriate for internals. If you wish to continue discussion or coordinate project development, you should start a new thread on the user forum. I’d be interested in seeing how such a tool turns out!