[plt-dev] reading symbols beginning with colon as keywords?

On 14 Jun 2009, at 14:55, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> Matthew Flatt wrote at 06/14/2009 09:34 AM:
>> I see no substantial technical advantage for any of the choices of
>> syntax, but there's a significant advantage in picking just one. All
>> else being equal, a single syntax makes the language easier to learn,
>> documentation easier to read, parsers easier to implement and extend,
>> etc. So, while I'm unsure that "#:" should be the syntax of keywords
>> forever, I'm sure that I don't want to support an additional ":"  
>> prefix
>> right now.
>>
>
> While I think ":" is superior to "#:", I would not advocate  
> switching to ":" if doing so meant breaking code that used "#:".   
> Except perhaps in a major new PLT release (e.g., 5.0).

+1 to this.

I wasn't a massive fan of '#:' initially, but it makes some kind of  
aesthetic sense along side other reader syntax like #t, #px, #s and so  
on.

Changing things now (or in the future) for the sake of a single  
character would be lots of work for very little gain.