mfp: What's up with this semicolon?

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Источник: http://blogs.msdn.com/mfp/archive/20...semicolon.aspx
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The most visual idiosyncrasy in X++ is the dangling semicolon separating the variable declarations from the actual code. But why is it there and why is it needed?
Best practices in X++ (as in most other modern languages) suggest using TitleCase when declaring (and referring to) types, and using camelCase when declaring variable types. Here is an example of what an X++ developer could write:
AccountNum accountNum;
;
accountNum = "4000";
As X++ (unlike most other modern languages) is case insensitive, this is what the compiler will see:
accountnum accountnum;
;
accountnum = "4000";
Suppose the dangling semicolon wasn't there. Then the "accountnum" statement in the second line is ambigious. It could either refer to the type or to the variable. The X++ compiler assumes it is the type, and thus generates a compilation error when encountering the equal (=) sign; as you cannot assign into a type. By inserting the dangling semicolon you instruct the compiler that there will be no more variable declarations; and thus "accoutnum" is a reference to the variable and not the type.
If it was made a priority to get rid of dangling semicolons, what could be done?

1. X++ could be made case sensitive. This would likely break all customizations and solutions available; unless it is accompanied with a code "beautifier".
2. The compiler could be made more intelligent by looking one more token ahead before giving up. As human beings easily can see through the ambiguity; the compiler should be able to do so too. I guess the developer solving this issue would kudos in AX-land.

The above is a draft of a blog post I wrote last week. I wrote it for two reasons: Mainly to explain the dangling semicolon issue, and secondarily to lay out bait for a developer on the X++ team. As it turned out more progress was made this weekend than the past eleven years in this corner of AX . After writing the draft above I decided to take a look under the covers in the compiler; to gauge the challenge, I guess. So I installed the latest version of VS and downloaded the latest source code for the kernel. (These are some of the freedoms you enjoy when working for Microsoft). After playing around with the grammar for a while, I came to the conclusion that the grammar is crisp and clear; the scanner is just feeding the wrong tokens to the parser. I found the spot where non-keyword tokens are evaluated. I discovered that if a token shares name with an X++ type (Class, Table, EDT, etc.) the parser assumes it is a type-token. After finding this spot it took me less than two hours to write some code that reads one token ahead and only assumes the current token is a type-token when it is followed by another non-keyword token. Sunday afternoon I had build 585 (the Release Candidate (RC0) of AX 2009) with a twist on my box: The dangling semicolon is no longer a requirement. I enjoyed the rest of the day in the sun with my family.
This morning I have created a package with my findings and sent it to the X++ team for evaluation. This change will not make it into AX 2009; but I'm confident those of us writing X++ code at Microsoft will enjoy this very soon. The rest of you will have to wait for AX6.0.


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Источник: http://blogs.msdn.com/mfp/archive/20...semicolon.aspx