logoalt Hacker News

xonre • today at 6:09 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

For readability, `then` allows splitting with newlines very long conditional expressions, without having to wrap the condition in parentheses:

  if x + y + z > a
    or verylongconditionalhere ()
    or anotherverylongconditionalhere ()
  then
    ...
after `if` and `elseif` the parser simply goes on until it finds `then`.

Replies

nmz • today at 5:33 PM

This is something I don't see a lot of people do. I've tended to do

  for long,list,of,variables,here
  in ageneratorhere(bigparameterhere)
  do
  end
and

  local x do
    -- everything after is just here to define x
  end
I'm still a little irked it works so well, the only alternative would be for the language to have labeled blocks. but that might be too terse
drunken_thor • today at 3:31 PM

Agreed, it keeps the parser fast as well because it is a lot more clear when the boolean statement ends and the code block begins. You either need parentheses, `then` or brackets around the block to make parsing clearly defined.