[tex-k] Minor issues in TANGLE and WEAVE

[Doug McKenna]

Karl -

The single best interpretation of "It is also used for the end of the string." is that "It" (whatever "it" is) is referring to a delimiter, in particular the string's terminating delimiter, of which there has to be one for the @= construction, where @= is the initiating delimiter for something in need of termination.

Every neuron in my coding brain is saying that the original quoting mechanism was, @= foobar @=, but that a decision was later made to conform the syntax to that of other control texts, all of which are delimited at their ends with @>.  So I'm guessing the comment wasn't updated, as regularly happens in every programmer's code (even the best!).  In any case, whatever "it" is, "it" is ambiguous.

Glad to hear of agreement with the "in_like" thing.

Oh, and I found a typo in weave.web that's easy to fix: search for "find to find" and change it to "try to find".  On or about line 2456.

Doug McKenna



----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Berry" <karl at freefriends.org>
To: "doug" <doug at mathemaesthetics.com>
Cc: "tex-k" <tex-k at tug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 4:40:19 PM
Subject: Re: [tex-k] Minor issues in TANGLE and WEAVE

Hi Doug,

    on or around lines 1313--1314 of the WEB file, it is stated that
    the WEB command @= initiates a "verbatim" Pascal string. It then says
    with respect to @=, "It is also used for the end of the string." 

I believe the "It" in "It is also used for the end of the string." 
is referring to the `verbatim' symbolic name (what this is a list of),
rather than the @= code that terminates the verbatim string in the input
.web file.

Looking at the module starting at line 3036
@ @<Copy verbatim string...@>=
it ends with a comment
end {another |verbatim| byte will be stored, since |a=verbatim|}

I can't say I see offhand how "another" |verbatim| byte gets stored, but
I get the sense that the verbatim code byte is marking the end of the
string (in the representation) as well as the beginning, as the original
comment can be interpreted as saying.  Maybe the app_repl call is
inserting the (end-)verbatim? Not sure. Or maybe I'm totally off.

Anyway, if this is the intent, the text could be clarified to say "The
|verbatim| code is also used" instead of "It". Wdyt?

    [weave.web]
    @d in_like=15 {\&{in}}

I concur that in_like is not used anywhere in weave.web that I can see
either, and should be removed. Will check with others ... --thanks, karl.