Bjarne Stroustrup proposed Generalized Overloading for C++2000, which not only lets you override all kinds of white space, like between two symbols separated left to right by a space (i.e. "a b" to add a to b), or two symbols separated top to bottom by a newline (i.e. "a \n b" to divide a by b, like a fraction), or even by tabs, or either kind of comment, but it also lets you override writing two symbols next to each other without any separation (i.e. "ab" to multiply a by b, which mathematicians love)!
Of course they also had to limit the number of characters per symbol to 1 in order to unambiguously support the "ab" syntax for multiplying a and b (or however you wanted to overload the "absence of white space" operator), but fortunately they mitigated that little problem by making C++ fully supports Unicode, so you had thousands of single character Unicode variable names to choose from. His prophetic intuition was spot-on, now that there are so many expressive and inclusive Emoji characters to use for single character variable names!
https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf
I really appreciate Bjarne Stroustrup's clean simple design and coherent long term vision for C++2000, and I'm looking forward to using three dimensional white space overloading in C++3D.
Of course they also had to limit the number of characters per symbol to 1 in order to unambiguously support the "ab" syntax for multiplying a and b (or however you wanted to overload the "absence of white space" operator), but fortunately they mitigated that little problem by making C++ fully supports Unicode, so you had thousands of single character Unicode variable names to choose from. His prophetic intuition was spot-on, now that there are so many expressive and inclusive Emoji characters to use for single character variable names!
https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf
I really appreciate Bjarne Stroustrup's clean simple design and coherent long term vision for C++2000, and I'm looking forward to using three dimensional white space overloading in C++3D.