Re: variable

[Gianmaria Lari]

On 24 November 2017 at 16:21, David Wright <address@hidden> wrote:

On Fri 24 Nov 2017 at 10:08:29 (+0100), David Kastrup wrote:
> Gianmaria Lari <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > On 24 November 2017 at 09:49, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> Gianmaria Lari <address@hidden> writes:
> >>
> >> > I'm sorry for the trivial question but why this code is wrong?
> >> >
> >> > \version "2.19.80"
> >> >
> >> > music = {a b}
> >> > \music
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > My understanding was that "\music" is substituted by its value "{a
> >> b}"....
> >>
> >> You need to put anything in between.  LilyPond looks at \music before
> >> deciding the assignment is complete because the assignment could be
> >>
> >> music = {a b} \addlyrics {Oh well}
> >>
> >> For that it needs to decide what \music is but the assignment is not yet
> >> complete...
> >
> > Thank you David!
> >
> > It is a bit frustrating.
>
> If you think that is frustrating, try working on the parser.  I didn't
> design that insane \addlyrics syntax.
>
> > Even apparently simple things are complicated....  but that's ok.
>
> Things are complicated _because_ of appearing simple.  Some simple
> appearances are more complicated to do than others.
>
> You would not want to write your music in Scheme syntax, and that would
> be by far the simplest to make sense of.
>
> I've worked on that late assignment nuisance a few times already.

When you think that writing just

\music

can buy you

\score {
  \new Staff {
    \new Voice {
      \music
    }
  }
}

and more, then having to write at least

{
  \music
}

won't seem so onerous.

Cheers,
David.

It was just a theoretical question. I wanted to understand why this code is correct:

{a}

but not this

music = {a}

\a

Now that I have understand the reason of the behaviour we can discuss it :)