writeln, spaces, and literals

[mppf]

It's common to see Chapel code like this:

writeln(a, " ", b, " ", c);

because otherwise, writeln will glom together the output:

writeln(1, 2, 3); // 123

In Python 3, the print function automatically adds spaces between multiple elements:

$ python3
>>> print(1,2)
1 2

Could Chapel do this as well?

The immediate counter-argument is something like this - well, wouldn't printing with a different separator become awkward? Like the following:

writeln(1, "+", 2, "+", 3); // 1+2+3 or 1 + 2 + 3 ?

My first reaction would be that writeln could recognize an ioLiteral and in that event not add spaces between arguments:

writeln(1, new ioLiteral("+"), 2, new ioLiteral("+"), 3); // 1+2+3

Then, my second thought is that string literals could be treated automatically as ioLiterals within writeln. That would make the first "+" case above be equivalent to the second. Additionally, it would make

readln(int1, "+", int2, "+", int3);

actually function reasonably, because the "+" will be interpreted as delimeters, rather than being a compilation error (can't read into a string literal).