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POWhy do programming languages not allow spaces in identifiers?
 

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  1. POWhy do programming languages not allow spaces in identifiers?
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    <p>This may seem like a dumb question, but still I don't know the answer. </p> <p>Why do programming languages not allow spaces in the names ( for instance method names )?</p> <p>I understand it is to facilitate ( allow ) the parsing, and at some point it would be impossible to parse anything if spaces were allowed. </p> <p>Nowadays we are so use to it that the <em>norm</em> is not to see spaces. </p> <p>For instance:</p> <pre><code> object.saveData( data ); object.save_data( data ) object.SaveData( data ); [object saveData:data]; </code></pre> <p>etc. </p> <p>Could be written as:</p> <pre><code> object.save data( data ) // looks ugly, but that's the "nature" way. </code></pre> <p>If it is only for parsing, I guess the identifier could be between <code>.</code> and <code>(</code> of course, procedural languages wouldn't be able to use it because there is no '.' but OO do..</p> <p>I wonder if parsing is the <em>only</em> reason, and if it is, how important it is ( I assume that it will be and it will be impossible to do it otherwise, unless all the programming language designers just... forget the option ) </p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p> <p>I'm ok with identifiers in general ( as the fortran example ) is bad idea. Narrowing to OO languages and specifically to methods, I don't see ( I don't mean there is not ) a reason why it should be that way. After all the <code>.</code> and the first <code>(</code> may be used.</p> <p>And forget the <code>saveData</code> method , consider this one:</p> <pre><code>key.ToString().StartsWith("TextBox") </code></pre> <p>as:</p> <pre><code>key.to string().starts with("textbox"); </code></pre>
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    1. USMechanical snail
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    1. COThis would be about as annoying as having to deal with spaces in filenames. In other words, very.
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      1. USGreg Hewgill
    2. CO@Oscar: saveData( data ) is redundantly named; save( data ) would suffice. See also: method overloading.
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      1. USDave Jarvis
    3. CO@Dave: Think about any other method name forget about that one.
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