Is double quote also a delimiter?

[puredanger]

In the general considerations section regarding whitespace:

The delimiters { } ( ) [ ] need not be separated from adjacent elements by whitespace.

Should double quote " also be considered a delimiter?

Question raised per #75

[mnemnion]

If I may, I think we should start here:

Elements are generally separated by whitespace.

This strikes me as informative, not normative.

I would at least hope that the whitespace rule looks more like:

Whitespace is only required when its presence is necessary to distinguish two elements

This is the substance of rules defining whitespace insensitivity, which I took to be (intended as) normative, on the basis of this phrase:

Whitespace, other than within strings, is not otherwise significant

Informally, I would consider a distinction drawn between "foo""bar" and "foo" "bar" to be significant use of whitespace. On an operational level (I'm all over your issue board today because I'm writing a demo edn parser), this means tokenizers can skip whitespace, and parsers never have to see it. It's a good property to have.

Being explicit about whitespace insensitivity would make the line you mentioned redundant, which is not at all the same as saying it should be removed, redundancy is often fine and helpful. It does separate two questions: "is whitespace ever necessary before an opening quote, or after a closing one" (no) and "are double quotes delimiters" (I do not know what implications that might have).