On: The Hardest Program I've Ever Written – How a code...

[lioeters]

> newlines terminate statements unless there is a semicolon, which does the same early

Since I'm writing a toy language with optional semicolons, I'm curious - how are you solving ambiguities in multi-line expressions? For example:

  1
  -1

Does your language not allow multi-line expressions, treating the above as two statements? Or, perhaps they must be explicitly an expression, like:

  (1
  -1)

I agree with you on another comment, that JavaScript's automatic semicolon insertion is complicated - so I'd like know if there's a sensible solution for languages without semicolons.

[saagarjha → lioeters]

In this language, there's very few multi-line expressions. However, for your specific case: yes, I would consider that two statements.

  1 -
  1

would be one: putting a binary operator by itself in one line would cause the parser to keep looking.

[lioeters → saagarjha]

Ah, I see, so new lines are like invisible operators (with low precedence) that ends a statement unless preceded by another operator. Right, that makes sense.

[jakear → lioeters]

Python behaves "sensibly" with regard to this. Semicolons are statement breaks. Endlines are statement breaks, unless theres some reason for them not to be, such as being in a open brace state.