Re: lambda, ->, haskell, and so on

> Is it too late for Ruby 1.9 to support lambdas that look like
> 
>    \ p1, p1 -> { block }

Not being a Haskell user, I have to ask: did you mean to write a block with
two parameters, like this?

    \ p1, p2 -> { block }

If not, it's a violation of DRY :-)

To me, backslash looks like an escaping operator (in strings and regexps, or
avoiding newline splits). So personally I find it ugly and unnatural.

As an example, presumably we talking about writing

    doit(\ p1, p2 -> { p1 + p2 }, \ msg -> { puts msg })

instead of

    doit(lambda { |p1, p2| p1 + p2 }, lambda { |msg| puts msg })

?

I generally use proc{...} anyway, even if it does have slightly different
semantics.

You could always take a leaf out of Paul Graham's book:
http://www.paulgraham.com/arcll1.html

"in Arc, lambda is called fn. This idea appalled me at first, but it seemed
like fn would be shorter and at least as expressive. What if I was just used
to lambda? So, with a queasy sense of duty, I decided to try it. And after a
few days I actually liked fn better. Now it seems clear to me that lambda is
an onion: Alonzo Church himself wouldn't have used it if he had to write out
the word lambda each time."

But at the end of the day, I'd vote for removing alternative syntaxes
altogether. It becomes harder to sell Ruby if there are too many equivalent
but different idioms to learn.

That's unless it's part of a grand unification plan (e.g. block parameters
gain optional/default arguments, and def methods become blocks). But I don't
think that's the case here.

Regards,

Brian.