Recently after spending an hour debugging/staring at a code, I found out that one or more blankspaces are allowed when invoking a function. For example,

iex(7)> IO. puts "hello"
hello
:ok  
iex(8)> IO.   puts("hello")
hello
:ok

I personally think this will introduce bugs. Here’s one instance where I ran into a problem when I mistakenly typed a period instead of a comma:

def handle_call(request, _caller, state) do
    {:reply, request. state}
end

When invoking a GenServer call, I got,

14:19:30.744 [error] GenServer :my_registry terminating
** (UndefinedFunctionError) function :some_request.state/0 is undefined (module :some_request is not available)
    :some_request.state()
    echo_gen_server.ex:13: EchoGenServer.handle_call/3
    (stdlib) gen_server.erl:661: :gen_server.try_handle_call/4
    (stdlib) gen_server.erl:690: :gen_server.handle_msg/6
    (stdlib) proc_lib.erl:249: :proc_lib.init_p_do_apply/3

What is the reasoning behind allowing blankspaces between Module and function invocation? Shouldn’t the compiler flag this and reported as error?