Does VW support underscores in selectors?

I'd worry about two things:

 - compatibility (which is already awful)

 - collision with assignment semantics when importing code that still
uses the underscore/arrow.

On Thursday, March 11, 2010, Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11 March 2010 22:35, Nicolas Cellier
> <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2010/3/11 Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com>:
>>> On 11 March 2010 16:47, Ian Trudel <ian.trudel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 2010/3/11 Torsten Bergmann <astares at gmx.de>:
>>>>> Pharo allows you to use underscores in method selectors.
>>>>> This is currently in Pharo 1.1 and not 1.0.
>>>>>
>>>>> Does that makes sense to have in Squeak trunk/Cuis too?
>>>>
>>>> No, this is *not* something I'd like to have in Squeak. It's a
>>>> potential disaster in the long run where either we will be forced to
>>>> standardize code in some way or live with a basic image/trunk/etc and
>>>> very weird variable names mixing camel_CameANd_whAtnot beyond the
>>>> usage of Glorp.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I don't see any disaster with it. Take another languages, does a
>>> presence of underscore in names makes them
>>> more beatiful/horrible above anything else? I don't think so.
>>>
>>
>> To my understanding, there is no need of _ in selectors, BUT for
>> hooking external procedures.
>> It's painful to have to remember two different selectors when you
>> heaviily rely on FFI (OpenGL is a good example indeed).
>>
>
> First, i think we should answer to a simple question: why many other
> computer languages allow underscores in their syntax as a
> valid character for identifiers.
> As to me, the answer is obvious: in natural languages we using space
> to separate two words, and since parsers can't cope (or can, but its
> highly impractical) with identifiers which having spaces:
>
> my variable := foo.
>
> an underscore is a good compromise between natural language and
> computer language to separate two words,
> while treat it as a single identifier:
>
> my_variable := foo.
>
> I came to smalltalk not long ago, and having over 15+ years of
> programming experience.
> I am always used underscores in this way, and never (or occasionally) like this:
>
> _abdomination := foo.
>
>
> Smalltalk spirit is a language which designed to remove unnecessary
> barriers between humand and computer - easy to learn and easy to
> express yourself, without need to be a highly educated
> genius who can translate a natural human language to a cryptic sequece
> of instructions which computer can understand.
> And allowing underscores in identifiers, as to me, is highly coherent
> with that spirit, because it this makes us easier to express
> ourselves.
>
>> Nicolas
>>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>
>

-- 
Casey Ransberger