[GAP Forum] semicolon

[Vince Giambalvo]

On Dec 10, 2011, at 6:36 PM, Lisette Brillemans wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> 
> When using GAP you have to end every line with a semicolon, as in C and C++.
> This is allright, but it also has the effect (on me) that something like SciLab or so is now very user unfriendly because there using a semicolon supresses the output.
> I have been using GAP for quite a while now (more than a year) but of course apart from GAP you need sometimes other programs, like Pari for instance. But also Pari has the behaviour that a semicolon suppresses output. This is very unhandy if you’re accustomed to GAP.
> 
> Is it possible to implement a function or maybe a command line option to change the behaviour of the semicolon of GAP in version 4.5.
> Of course I’m only talking about oneliners. 
> The programming language should of course stay as it is.
> 
> Sage uses a Pythonlike language to connect many algebraic and mathematical programs into one package but it’s not what I’m looking for. I only would like to be able to switch the behaviour of GAP’s semicolon. If that is not possible I' very much like to here why not.
> If there are more users experiencing this annoying problem then of course I would like to hear from them if they have found a solution and which one.
> 
If what you want is a line, or switch in your configuration file, fine.  But I would think in general that it would not be easy to implement.  And I certainly use the ability to type a line with a return in them.   And the GAP input routine would need to be rewritten to figure out when a line was complete.  For example
x := 4+ 4
+3;
would probably not give you what you want.

     Vince