Re: Strings as variable names

[David Kastrup]

Johan Vromans <address@hidden> writes:

> On Mon, 28 Dec 2015 19:01:47 +0100
> Urs Liska <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> > part = cello
>> > 
>> > \score {
>> >   \"bella_melodia_\part"
>> > }
>> 
>> I think something like this should be achievable using a music function
>> with two string arguments.
>
> Yes, but my suggestion was to have a mechanism for interpolation of
> variables in strings, which is much more generic, flexible and
> powerful.

The above is mainly confused.  Remember that \n in a string stands for
newline.

> And most programming languages have it.

Uh what?  Bourne shells can interpolate variables (written with $ rather
than \ by the way) into _double_-quoted strings.  Maybe some other
shells can.

But what _programming_ languages allow interpolating into quoted
strings?  The C preprocessor can expand #identifier into a string, and
juxtaposed with other double-quoted strings they combine into a larger
string I believe.  But that's only for preprocessor constants, and those
are not really part of the language proper.

The strings in Python's regular expression replacements can interpolate
variable values, but those are not part of the string syntax but of the
regexp replacement semantics.

And so on.

-- 
David Kastrup