colon a special character?

[Per Bothner]

Ferrier wrote:

> 'scuse my ignorance: is the colon a special symbol character?


Yes.  Colons are used to indicate keywords.
NAME: (and :NAME for compatibility with Common Lisp and some
other Scheme dialects) is a self-evaluating keyword.

You can control it with two fields of LispExpr:

   /** True if ":IDENTIFIER" should be treated as a keyword. */
   protected boolean initialColonIsKeyword = true;

   /** True if "IDENTIFIER:" should be treated as a keyword. */
   protected boolean finalColonIsKeyword = true;

There should perhaps be a command-line option that controls these,
but currently there isn't.

There is a define-namespace form that provides functionality like
XML namespaces, but it isn't finished, partly because there are
some compatibility issues.  I'm thinking of a Kawa switch to
enable various syntax options that woudl be useful for XML.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/per/