[Feature removal request] Disallow tokens after numbers without separation

[aaaaaa123456789]

After the long discussion the other way about whether something like 123abc should be valid or not, the issue right now is that it's impossible to safely implement any feature that extends numeric syntax in any way, because 123abc parses as 123 followed by abc. This is also confusing (unexpected by virtually everyone), almost certainly bug-inducing (consider operator precedence issues), and used by virtually nobody (only one use case found in our brief research, which could be equally or better served by separating the suffix from the number with a space, and would definitely be better served by user-defined functions).

While the space for expansion in terms of number syntax is large, and we could probably have a long debate about what's useful and what's not, all of that is blocked by this syntax.

Therefore, my request is that this parsing becomes deprecated in 0.5.x and removed in 0.6.0. That way we can begin talking about any features using this space after 0.6.0 comes out someday.

[Rangi42]

When or if we add a feature involving letters following numbers, we can just change how lexing works then, and have users add spaces. If we never do so, there's no need to change it.

That said, when I get back to #958 and add 12.34q8 syntax for fixed-point values not using the current default -Q precision, that will fix this issue.

[aaaaaa123456789]

If we never do so, there's no need to change it.

It's a breaking change (as @ISSOtm raised on Saturday), and thus it should have an explicit deprecation/removal unless we know nobody is using it.

[Rangi42]

It's a breaking change on the same level as introducing a STRFMT function and breaking users' labels with that name. We don't need to delay the feature by a release while we add a deprecation warning for labels named "STRFMT".

Anyway, whether or not we add a deprecation step, should 123abc lex as a new token type?

[ISSOtm]

There's no need to extend numeric syntax right now, so this change is unnecessary. We can deprecate when the needs arise, but I don't see any downsides with the current situation.

[aaaaaa123456789]

Anyway, whether or not we add a deprecation step, should 123abc lex as a new token type?

It should lex as a number (and then fail, like 2.2.2 would).