From: "Florian Groß" <florgro@...>
Date: 2005-03-21T22:42:01+09:00
Subject: Re: New block syntax

Daniel Amelang wrote:

> I really like the new proposed syntax for proc/blocks:
> 
> b = {|| puts "good idea"}
> 
> But the empty pipes make it ungraceful, in my opinion. I understand
> the need to differentiate between the {} syntax for blocks and the {}
> syntax for hashes. Thus, I propose that instead of changing the block
> syntax to resolve the ambiguity, we change the hash syntax.

If we require Hashs to be of the { key => value } form instead of the { 
key, value } form then I think we could differentiate blocks and hashes 
without needing the empty argument list.

Ruby would however have to potentially parse quite a bit of the 
construct before it knows what to do with it as the key part of Hashes 
can be very complex -- still, I think this approach would be possible as 
lambda { 1 => 2 } is syntactically invalid. (I think perl handles this 
in a similar fashion, BTW)

I dislike changing the Hash syntax as that's quite a big change for a 
small feature -- I don't think it is worth it. Perhaps if Ruby would 
have been designed with specifier-less lambdas this would have been a 
better option.