KeyboardDollars
From Offering Load Wiki
I find it useful to look at how a language spends it's synatax dollars, or it's punctuation characters.
| Name | Discussion | |
|---|---|---|
| . | period | is used to terminate statements |
| % | percent sign | comment till end of line |
| ; | semicolon | is used to seperate series of pattern matching rules, and guard expressions. |
| , | comma | is used to seperate series of expressions |
| : | colon | Used to denote names in module, in try statements for class of what's being caught, and in bit comprehensions. see also also :\: and =:= |
| :: | double colon | used to the type specs provided both to the compiler and in documentation as shown in this example:
%%============================================================================================================
%% @spec register_pid(FileName::filename(), Start::Pos, End::Pos, RegName::string(),SearchPaths::[dir()])-> term()
% @doc This function associates a name, which must be an atom, with a pid, and replaces the uses of this pid in
%% send expressions with the name.
-spec(register_pid(FileName::filename(), Start::pos(), End::pos(), RegName::string(),SearchPaths::[dir()], TabWidth::integer())->
{error, string()} |{ok, [filename()]}).
register_pid(FName, Start, End, RegName, SearchPaths, TabWidth) ->
register_pid(FName, Start, End, RegName, SearchPaths, TabWidth, emacs).
|
| ! | bang | send message |
| ? | question mark | prefix for preprocessor macro |
| - | minus sign | subtract, negative numbers, and in preprocessor for module attributes |
| $ | dollar sign | character literals, i.e. $a |
| # | hash | base in integer literals, i.e. 16#FFFD; record syntax |
| = | equal sign | matching operator, and in record definition syntax |
| @ | at sign | documentation in comments, i.e. @spec, @doc; and inside atoms, in particular node names like ejabberd@host1 |
| & | ampersand | not used?! |
| * | star | multiply |
| ( ) | simple parens | expressions, defining argument lists, functions calls, compiler annotations. |
| { } | squiggly brackets | not used?!? |
| \ | ??? | ??? |
| " | double quote | syntaxtic sugar for lists of characters, aka text string literals |
| ` | single backquote | Not used |
| ' | single quote | quoting atoms |
| _ | underscore | constitute character in names; as the first character in variable names denotes a wildcard, i.e. that it will never be read. |
| ~ | tilde | used in io:format strings, but not otherwise? |
| ^ | carrot | control characters for example $^A is control-A, not used otherwise |
| -> | right arrow | is used to define the individual rules of a functions, case statements, recieve. e.g. pattern -> 'expression |
| <- | left error | operator inside of list comprehensions |
| <= | ?? | is used in bit comprehensions |
| || | ?? | list comprehension |
| ++ | ? | list concatenate |
| -- | ? | an set subtract, useful if lists are sets. |
| orelse andalso | ? | short cut booleans |
| [, ] | square brackets | list construction and pattern matching |
| ,, | | list patterns and constructors | |
| <<, >> | ? | bit patterns and constructors, analagous to [, ] for lists |
| =:= | ? | exact equals |
