#| ... |#

[ALAN at MIT-MC (Alan Bawden)]

(SHIT! This damned keyboard just doubled a ^C and sent you all some
more trash to delete!  Most of you get TWO copies!)

1) Yes, I prefer ";" as the way to write a comment too.  But there are
things that you cannot do with it that you can do with "#|".  If MIDAS
programmers prefer the ";" comment and tend to use it when they can,
then I suspect the same thing will remain true of Lisp programmers.

2) Yes, It is intended that the things should nest.  I agree that
editors won't be able to deal with this correctly, but that is a poor
reason to screw ourselves.  People who use "/*" in PL1 have complained
bitterly for years that the damn things don't nest correctly.

3) About slashification.  I didn't think it was necessary since you
can always comment out a "|#" by typing "|/#" instead, but "/|#" is
better parsed by editors.  So OK, slashification is now part of the
definition.

4) Anyone who uses

#|
 |
 |#

has just thrown away all the advantages of "#|".  He might as well be
typing ";;;" at the front of every line.  Editors will also get confused by
all the "|"s.  For these reasons I expect that this will not be done.
(BTW, M-Q does understand ";;;" if you set the fill prefix, but that is
not always enough.)

5) How come nobody voted no the first time I brought this up?