itch.io

In C, expressions are explicitly terminated with a semicolon (;). In Lil, expressions are implicitly terminated when they are no longer "incomplete"; that is, their rightmost token is not a primitive or other syntactic form which "expects" an additional subexpression to the right. Outside comments and string literals, all whitespace in Lil is equivalent, so we can sequence "statements" with newlines between them:

ax:2+3
bx:ax*5

...or we could run them together on a single line:

ax:2+3 bx:ax*5

In this particular example we could even remove the space separating the two statements, because Lil identifiers may not begin with a number; splitting the "3" from the "bx" is unambiguous. I do not recommend using such a style in practice:

ax:2+3bx:ax*5

Lil interprets all three variations as the sequence of tokens (shown separated by whitespace):

ax : 2 + 3 bx : ax * 5

Whitespace is only required when Lil would otherwise "see" a single token but multiple tokens are intended:

onfoo   # reference to a variable named "onfoo"
on foo  # the keyword "on" followed by the identifier "foo"

The bracketed argument list for a function call is not a special case; just like the "do...end" of a function body, it accepts any sequence of expressions, each implicitly terminated. If the argument-expressions are complex, it may be stylistically clearer to parenthesize them and/or use whitespace to produce a visually apparent grouping, but this does not change how Lil interprets the expression. Consider:

x:11
y:first range 10
z:3*5
foo[x y z]

Versus the following equivalent alternatives:

foo[11 first range 10 3 * 5]
foo[(11) (first range 10) (3 * 5)]
foo[
 11
 first range 10
 3 * 5
]

Or, my preference for this particular situation,

foo[11 (first range 10) 3*5]

The comma operator (,) should always be understood as a primitive operator, rather than special syntax; it's of the same nature as the operators plus (+) or times (*).

Does that help clarify?