CoCoA » CoCoA-5

• the type of the last unclosed block (or empty if none)
• the continuation prompt (something with triple-dot in it)
• the user's chosen standard prompt

Appending the user's standard prompt makes it relatively easy to spot lines of input; however it can make the combined prompt quite long. For instance in an incomplete function definition I get

Define ... ; >>>

I note that bash has a primary prompt, and a secondary one (which it uses for continuations).

Here is what my personal CoCoA does currently:

/**/ 1+2
[[waiting for semicolon]] /**/ ;
3
/**/ define john(x)
[[define ... ]] /**/ return x+1;
[[define ]] /**/ enddefine
/**/ 

What do you think of putting the supplementary prompt parts inside double-square-brackets?

I have now removed dot-dot-dot from the prompt prefix.
Also when inside a multi-line comment, the prompt now says [[multi-line comment]] which is probably easier to comprehend than the former /* ...
Similarly when inside a multi-line string literal (though this is currently commented out)

I have now revised the impl after designing a simple test, and seeing that the behaviour was "sub-optimal"...
The test is:

1/* comment
*/
;
define fn(a)
  /* comment
  */
  return a+1;
enddefine

And CoCoA responds like this:

>>> 1/* comment
[[in multi-line comment]] >>> */
[[waiting for semicolon]] >>> ;
1
>>> define fn(a)
[[define]] >>>   /* comment
[[define >> in multi-line comment]] >>>   */
[[define]] >>>   return a+1;
[[define]] >>> enddefine
>>> 

Anna and John are happy. Closing.