From: Christopher Gill <gilltots@...>
Date: 2008-05-20T02:37:49+09:00
Subject: Re: lambda, ->, haskell, and so on

how about an uppercase lambda (instead of the usual lowercase one)
composed of a forward slash, then a backward slash: /\

/\(x) {...}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda

pros:
looks more like a lambda to me (than "->")
only 2 characters so easy to type

cons:
none! (*)



*may not be accurate

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In message "Re: lambda, ->, haskell, and so on"
>    on Tue, 20 May 2008 01:49:04 +0900, Nate_Wiger@playstation.sony.com writes:
>
> |First off, it already means something specific in well-established
> |languages such as Perl5 and C/C++.  On my team, I have C++ coders that dip
> |into Ruby (and vice-versa), and I really don't want to deal with "->"
> |confusion.  Most other pieces of syntax are easy to overcome, but "->" is
> |nearly as pervasive as "+".
>
> Point taken, although I am very optimistic about the human ability to
> adopt languages.  If one can handle both Spanish and English at the
> same time (or even worse, Japanese and English for my case), I can
> believe he can handle '->' without confusion, if it's prefix form
> unlike C++. ;-)
>
> |Second, there are a couple alternatives that we could use, leveraging
> |existing Ruby syntax:
> |
> |        http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16662
> |        http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16616
>
> So, you prefer lambda(x) {...} or x => {...} over ->(x){...}, right?
> The latter (=>) conflicts with other part of Ruby syntax, namely hash
> literals, besides it complicates the language.
>
> I am not fond of "lambda" being keyword, because
>
>  * it changes meaning of the valid syntax ("lambda(a){p a}" is valid
>    in 1.8 with different semantics).
>  * it's long (6 letters).  considering the functional programming
>    trend in Ruby and other languages, we will see anonymous function
>    expression more often in the future.
>
> There could be a chance for the keyword like "fun" or "fn", but
> there's little hope.
>
>                                                        matz.
>
>
how abou