Rebol's extremely strange nature makes people wonder what they should or shouldn't be doing with it. When I tried writing basically my "first mezzanine" (COMBINE) long ago, I faced questions pretty much anyone writing such a primitive would...like Should a WORD! be treated casually as if it were an ANY-STRING!?
>> mode: 'depeche
>> combine/with ["a" mode "b"] space
== "a depeche b"
Back then, I didn't know if that should be an error or not. And if WORD! would be legal, should SET-WORD! too? Would it have a colon? Or was there a higher purpose for these things in the dialect, and should a variable holding one act the same as if one were literally present in the block?
Ren-C is on the path of thinking of "ANY-WORD!" as being strings is correct. Which led me to consider this piece of code from HELP:
for-each [a b] [
"!" "-ex"
"?" "-q"
"*" "-mul"
"+" "-plu"
"/" "-div"
"=" "-eq"
"<" "-lt"
">" "-gt"
"|" "-bar"
][
replace/all item a b
]
What it is doing is pretty simple. It is trying to convert a Rebol name to one that is readable/safe to use in a URL, so the help website URL doesn't have "weird" characters in it.
But if we're all on board with WORD! as working as a string, do you really need all those quotes? Couldn't you say:
for-each [a b] [
! -ex
? -q
* -mul
+ -plu
/ -div
= -eq
< -lt
> -gt
| -bar
][
replace/all item a b
]
You can do that, though it won't work for everything. e.g. : would not be a legal WORD!. And | is BAR!...like how _ is a BLANK!...one must wonder, if those will "stringify" to be how they look. Is this a good practice?
What I want us to be saying clearly now is YES: it's a good practice and you can count on writing code like this. I think it's foundational to what Rebol is about.
Though as a matter of taste, I actually think the following looks slightly better, because using different types creates a kind of delimiting:
for-each [a b] [
! "-ex"
? "-q"
* "-mul"
+ "-plu"
/ "-div"
= "-eq"
< "-lt"
> "-gt"
| "-bar"
][
replace/all item a b
]
But that's just me. YMMV.