Text markup conventions (was: sys.stderr.write and sys.exit)

[Ben Finney]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> Ben Finney wrote:
> > (Note: The underscore '_' is a valid character in Python code, so
> > I was quite confused by what you wrote and had to read it several
> > times to see that you were intending the underscores not to be
> > part of the code. Better to show a line of code on its own line in
> > your message.)
>
> Old "rich text" email format effectors... *word* => bolded, /word/
> => italic, _word_ => underscored.

Yes, I use those (or similar) myself, but only in natural language
where the context makes it clear that the punctuation characters are
not intended to be part of the content. When showing program code,
it's a poor choice to use punctuation characters for such markup,
since it's not clear which ones are part of the code.

-- 
 \          "It's a good thing we have gravity or else when birds died |
  `\             they'd just stay right up there. Hunters would be all |
_o__)                                     confused."  -- Steven Wright |
Ben Finney