Re: identifier length in AT&T and GNU troff

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Branden,

> > > We get used to delimiters being paired.  :)
> > 
> > Depends on the delimiter: colon is an example, comma another.
>
> Those are good examples of delimiters that pair with themselves, say
> in ed(1) address expressions or sed(1) replacement operations.

I don't understand that point.
The : and , above are delimiters which don't need pairing, as I show.

> From a formal perspective, I'm not sure a "delimiter" that occurs only
> once in an expression is worthy of that name, though it will likely be
> widely understood in casual use.

It's not casual use.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/delimiter

    Noun
    delimiter (plural delimiters)

        1. That which delimits, that separates.
              A comma-delimited file has commas as the delimiter,
              separating each field of the file.

        2. (computing) A unique character or series of characters that
           indicates the beginning or end of a specific statement,
           string or function body set.

You're thinking of brackets rather than delimiters.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.