Required parentheses for some source code attributes

[RaimoNiskanen]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

In Erlang source code, for example, the -module attribute requires parenthese, but the -moduledoc does not. So you can write:

-module(foo).
-moduledoc false.

But not

-module foo.
-moduledoc false.

In fact, most attributes does not require parentheses, but the ones processed by the preprocessor does.

In this case, when using -module foo. the compilation succeeds, but there is no ?MODULE macro available in the source code, which you have when using -module(foo).

This is an annoying inconsistency, and I think in my first example that it is easier to read without the parentheses.

Describe the solution you'd like

Make the preprocessor not require parentheses around attributes, so it behaves consistently with respect to the parser.

Describe alternatives you've considered

We could live on with this ugliness, but many new attributes are by convenience not written with parentheses, such as -moduledoc false., -doc "Documentation"., etc.