On 02/25/2013 08:14 PM, John Cowan wrote:
> Per Bothner scripsit:
>> I.e. "&" followed by a single character followed by ";"
>> is equivalent to that literal character.  Is this convenient
>> enough to make up for adding yet more weird syntax?
>
> No.

It occurs to me that the only regular "printable" characters
it would be useful to escape this way are '{', '}', and '&'.
Since we allow unescaped '{' and '}' as long as they are properly
balanced, these would rarely need to be escaped.

However, '&' remains.  We can support this one
by the traditional mechanism of doubling:

&{Smith && Wesson}  ==> "Smith & Wesson"

as well as:

&{Smith & Wesson}
--
	--Per Bothner
xxxxxx@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/