Tokenisation and layout

A Miranda script or expression is regarded as being composed of  tokens,
separated by layout.

A token is one of the following -  an  identifier,  a  literal,  a  type
variable,  or a delimiter.  Identifiers and literals each have their own
manual section.  A type variable is a sequence of  one  or  more  stars,
thus  *  **  ***  etc.   (see basic type structure).  Delimiters are the
miscellaneous symbols, such as operators, parentheses, and keywords.   A
formal  definition  of the syntax of tokens, including a list of all the
delimiters in given under `Miranda lexical syntax'.

RULES ABOUT LAYOUT

Layout consists of white space characters (spaces,  tabs,  newlines  and
formfeeds),  and  comments.   A  comment  consists of a pair of adjacent
vertical bars, together with all the text to the right of  the  bars  on
the same line.  Thus
        || this is a comment
Layout  is  not  permitted  inside  tokens  (except  in  char and string
constants, where it is significant) but may be inserted  freely  between
tokens to make scripts more readable.  Layout is ignored by the compiler
except in two respects:

1) At least one space (or  other  layout  characters)  must  be  present
between  two  tokens  that  would otherwise form an instance of a single
larger token.  For example in
        f 19 'b'
we have a function, f, applied to a number and a character,  but  if  we
were to omit the two intervening spaces, the compiler would read this as
a single six-character identifier, because both digits and single-quotes
are  legal  characters  in  an identifier.  (Where it is not required to
force the correct tokenisation, or because  of  the  offside  rule,  see
below, the presence of layout between tokens is optional.)

2)  Certain  syntactic  objects  (roughly,  the  right  hand  sides   of
declarations  --  for  an exact account see those entities followed by a
`(;)' in the formal syntax) obey Landin's offside  rule  [Landin  1966].
This  requires  that every token of the object lie either directly below
or to the right of its first token.  A token which breaks this  rule  is
said  to  be  `offside'  with  respect to that object and terminates its
parse.  For example in
        x = 2 < a
        y = f q
the 'y' is offside with respect to the right hand side of the definition
of  'x'  (because it is to the left of the initial '2').  In such a case
the trailing semicolon may be omitted from the right hand  side  of  the
equation for x.

It  is  because of the offside rule that Miranda scripts do not normally
contain explicit semicolons as terminators for  definitions.   The  same
rule  enables  the compiler to determine the scopes of nested where's by
looking at their indentation levels.  For example in
	f x = g y z
	      where
	      y = (x+1)*(x-1)
	      z = p x (q y)
	g r = groo (r+1)

it is the offside rule which makes it clear that the definition  of  'g'
is  not local to the right hand side of the definition of 'f', but those
of 'y' and 'z' are.

It is always possible to terminate a right  hand  side  by  an  EXPLICIT
semicolon,  instead  of  relying  on  the offside rule.  For example the
above script could be written all in one line, as
  f x = g y z where y = (x+1)*(x-1); z = p x (q y);; g r = groo (r+1);

Notice that we need TWO semicolons after the definition of z - the first
terminates  the  rhs of the definition of `z', and the second terminates
the larger rhs of which it is a part, namely that of the  definition  of
`f'.   If we put only one semicolon at this point, the definition of `g'
would be local to that of `f'.

This  example  should  convince  the  reader  that  code  using   layout
information  to show the block structure is much more readable, and this
is the normal practise.

[Reference P.J. Landin "The Next 700 Programming Languages", CACM vol  9
pp157-165 (March 1966).]

Note that an additional comment  convention  applies  in  scripts  whose
first  character  is  a  `>'.   See  separate  manual entry on `literate
scripts'.

