From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2008-05-06T01:48:33+09:00
Subject: Re: lambda, ->, haskell, and so on

Hi --

On Mon, 5 May 2008, Paul Brannan wrote:

> On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 12:26:47PM +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:
>> This is one of those e-mails that I know from the start to be futile,
>> but...
>>
>> For a while now, the
>>
>>      -> (params) { block }
>>
>> syntax in Ruby 1.9 has bothered me, but I've never been sure why.
>> Today, while playing with pure, it struck me. The '->' sequence is in
>> an unexpected place. Having played with some functional languages, I'm
>> used to lambdas being written
>
> I agree.  To me the -> looks like an arrow rather than a lambda, so it
> reels like it should be between two items.
>
> What if "lambda" were to become a keyword, so one could write:
>
>  lambda(params) { block }
>
> as an alternative to the -> syntax?

That would definitely be better. You'd then have, I assume:

   lambda {|x,y,z| block }   # block/yield arg. semantics
   lambda(x,y,z) { block }   # method semantics

which would, I think, cover what's needed.


David

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