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Leaving Out the Statement Terminator

Glish has a simple rule for when the ; terminating a statement can be left out. In general, if a line ends with a token that suggests continuation (such as a comma or a binary operator) the statement continues onto the next line. A semi-colon is inserted if it ends with something that could come at the end of a statement. Those tokens that can end a statement are:

• the ) character, unless it's part of the test in a if, for, or while statement, or the argument list in a function definition;
• the ] character;
• the break, exit, next (and its alias continue), and return keywords;
• identifiers and constants;
• and the special event variables $agent, $name, and $value.

Glish inserts ;'s only at the end of a line or just before a ``{". You cannot use these rules to jam two statements onto one line:

    print a b := 3

is illegal, though both

    print a; b := 3

and

    { print a } b := 3

are perfectly okay.

You can prevent Glish from inserting a ; by using an escape (\) as the last character of a line. For example,

    print a \
        , b

is okay, and equivalent to

    print a,
        b

or

    print a, b

A final \ doesn't work after a comment. For example:

    print a   # oops, syntax error next line \
        , b

is interpreted as two separate statements, the second statement produces a syntax error.