The classic solution of this problem was invented in FORTRAN in early 50 -- it is a backslash at the end of the line.
And, again... exactly how much existing Perl 5 code has backslashes at the end of lines (commented or otherwise)? Approximately none. Boom. It breaks.
Question to you: how many times you corrected missing semicolon in your Perl scripts the last week ?
That's an easy one: Zero.

Which isn't to claim that I never forget semicolons, but I generally only get "possible missing semicolon"-type errors from the compiler once every month or two, and the compiler is often wrong about them. (There's still an error in my code, of course, but it's a different error, rather than the missing semicolon that the compiler suspected.)

Edit: Come to think of it, that closing parenthetical is an even bigger problem with this suggestion. If the compiler thinks I have a missing semicolon, but the real error is actually something else... then that means that, if the compiler says "hey, no problem, I'll just implicitly add that semicolon for you", then the actual error will still be there, undetected, waiting to strike at run-time when I least expect it. That is not an improvement!

In reply to Re^4: What esteemed monks think about changes necessary/desirable in Perl 7 outside of OO staff by dsheroh
in thread What esteemed monks think about changes necessary/desirable in Perl 7 outside of OO staff by likbez

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.