The smallest feature

This has to be one of the smallest features ever shipped.  We’ve modified the behavior of one character, and it is a small character at that.  But I think you will agree that it will have a major impact on your work.

See if you can spot the difference.  Last week:

This week:

Did you catch it?  Of course, it is the 5 red pixels after the semicolon that indicates an error.

Yes, after years of research, massive focus groups, intense design debates, and countless cups of coffee, we now accept formulas with a semicolon at the end.   For those of you in lands where a comma is used as the decimal separator, that’s two semicolons.

What’s the big deal?  First, there are many of you that simply can’t kick the habit of putting a semicolon at the end of everything.  C/C++/C# demands it and many other languages either prefer or accept it.

Second, have you ever tried to comment out a function call at the end of a long formula?   Take this example:

If you comment out the last line, you are left with a dangling semicolon on the previous line that will cause an error.  But no longer:

Now, can you use TWO chaining operators in a row?  No, let’s not get crazy out there.