Also why not replace that odd else with something like "default " that's verbose as well.
That would mean a version of Pascal that allows "else", "otherwise" and "default" for the same thing. That kind of stuff gives a strong impression that the language wasn't well thought out or, is driven by "Christmas tree design" (shiny feature!.. we'll hang it over here.)
In fact you can already write
otherwise instead of
else. There you have your Christmas tree.
For now, we have found very few specific examples that suggest that the semicolon would be necessary. That's the whole point of the discussion: if no one finds a reason to keep the semicolon, maybe there is no need for it.
In other words, if you are afraid of the danger of not having semicolon but cannot explain why, maybe there is no danger and it is safe. Hence the discussion to see together what could actually happen without semicolon.
I've thought a bit about it and maybe we don't have to change the compiler at all. It could be just some preprocessing. For example, the "semicolon-less" preprocessor could:
- check that there are no semicolon at the end of lines, otherwise throw an error
- at the end of the line, if the token is not line-continuing, and that there isn't an else at the begining of the next line, add a semicolon
Note that this is a theoretical discussion, it is not a demand and not even a request until there is a satisfactory way of doing it.