Proposed convention: prefix for "normal" identifiers

[qwertie]

By convention, the first character of any identifier in a Loyc tree determines whether or not it is "special": ASCII codes under 40 are special, all others are "normal" identifiers. In particular, # identifies constructs (classes, namespaces, functions, for-loops, etc.), ' identifies operators ('+, '>>, '&&, etc.), and % identifies trivia (comments, newlines, etc.)

Ahh, but what if there is a language that uses allows one of these characters under 40 in a "normal" identifier? Then it would seem that the Loyc tree for that identifier should be encoded with a "normalcy" prefix to indicate it is not special, and the prefix should have an ASCII code >= 40.

I'm going to propose the + prefix for this purpose, so that if #foo is intended to be a "normal" identifier, it should be encoded as +#foo. Why plus? Mainly because, in most contexts, it is not already used for some other purpose... I considered comma , but in LES2 it is easier to escape the plus sign + (@+#foo vs @`,#foo`).

This rule is intended for encoding languages outside the Loyc project, and it is not a proposal to change existing code. It does not apply to LES, because a major purpose of LES is to express the contents of Loyc trees, including "special" ones. The lexer of LES treats # like a "normal" identifier character, but the reason for this is to be able to encode #special identifiers easily without any escaping mechanism. So if you write #foo in LES, the Symbol #foo will be stored (not +#foo). This rule does not apply to Enhanced C# either, largely for a historical reason (EC# was originally intended to play the role of encoding Loyc trees that LES plays now.)