On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 9:09 PM John Hubbard <jhubbard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 10/21/24 11:59 AM, Alice Ryhl wrote:
> > On 10/21/24 8:41 PM, John Hubbard wrote:
> >> On 10/21/24 11:37 AM, Miguel Ojeda wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 8:35 PM John Hubbard <jhubbard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Is this another case of C and Rust using different words for things??
> >>>> Wow. OK...
> >>>
> >>> I am not sure what you mean -- by BE I meant British English.
> >>>
> >>> See my other reply as well -- I just changed it anyway because Rust
> >>> apparently uses "parentheses".
> >>>
> >>
> >> Right. For spoken languages, that's simply preference, and I would not
> >> try to impose anything on anyone there.
> >>
> >> But in this case, at least for C (and, from reading my Rust book(s), I
> >> thought for Rust also), "parentheses" is a technical specification, and
> >> we should prefer to be accurate:
> >>
> >> parentheses: ()
> >> brackets: []
> >>
> >> Yes?
> > What word would you use to collectively talk about (), [], {}? In my native language they're all a kind of parenthesis.
> >
>
> Good question. I've never attempted that when discussing programming
> language details, because it hasn't come up, because it would be a
> programming error in C to use one in place of the other. And it is
> rare to refer to both cases in C.
>
> Rust so far seems to have the same distinction, although I am standing
> by to be corrected as necessary, there! :)
>
> At a higher level of abstraction, though, perhaps "grouping" is a good
> word.
Rust macros can use different types of brackets. For example, the
`assert!(1 < 2)` macro uses round parenthesises, the `vec![1,2,3]`
macro uses square parenthesises, and the `thread_local! { ... }` macro
uses curly parenthesies. The round and square brackets are used for
expression-like things, and the curlies are used for things that
expand to top-level items such as global variables or functions.
Macros cannot use any other delimiter than those three. So e.g. <>
wouldn't work.
Alice
