[glitchc]

No, as python and other languages amply demonstrate, the semicolon is for the compiler, not the developer. If the compiler is sophisticated enough to figure out that a semicolon is needed, it has become optional. That's the OP's point.

[taormina]

But the language spec for Python is what allows for this, not the compiler. \n is just the magic character now except now we also need a \ to make multiline expressions. It’s all trade offs, compilers are not magic

[BeetleB]

> now except now we also need a \ to make multiline expressions.

You never need the backslash in Python to make multiple expressions. There's always a way to do multiline using parentheses. Their own style guidelines discourage using backslash for this purpose.

[taormina]

And you can also do it with triple quotation marks if strings are involved, but it’s still more work for the compiler that someone explicitly did, it’s not magic.

[BeetleB]

Plain strings work fine. Python has the same behavior as C: If two strings separated by whitespace, it concatenates them. So if I have a long string, I start with an open parenthesis, type one string, go to the next line, and another, and so on over several lines. Python sees it all as one string. Very readable.

[scotty79]

Scala then. Semicolons are optional but you still can have them if you need them

[lblume]

The obvious example would have been JavaScript, but nobody wants to say something positive about JavaScript...

[scotty79]

JavaScript has some specific and unique issues. Some silly choices (like auto inserting of semi-colons after empty return) and source code routinely, intentionally getting mangled by minification.

[glitchc]

> but nobody wants to say something positive about JavaScript...

For obvious reasons...

[nazgul17]

It's not that the semicolon is somehow a special character and that's why it's required/optional. It's the context that makes it necessary or not. Python proves that it's possible to design a language that doesn't need semicolons; it does not mean that e.g. Java or C are well defined if you make semicolons optional.

[sokoloff]

If it’s in the language spec as required there and I’m using a compiler that claims to implement that language spec, I want the compiler to raise the error.

Additionally offering help on how to fix it is welcome, but silently accepting not-language-X code as if it were valid language-X code is not what I want in a language-X compiler.