From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2005-03-20T05:14:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Paul Graham recommends Ruby

Navindra Umanee <navindra@cs.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Ruby blocks are just syntactic sugar for a special-case lambda.  Ruby
> > 
> > Care to elaborate?  What's lacking?
> 
> Yeah, sorry for being unclear.  I was referring to higher-order
> functions i.e. Ruby blocks allow you to pass one anonymous lambda to a
> higher-order function with convenient syntax...  for more than that it
> gets less convenient.

Well, since you cited scheme, it's the difference between

a.meth(lambda {|i| i+1}, lambda {|i| i-1})

and

a.meth(lambda{|i| i+1}) {|i| i - 1}

So that without the "one free closure" idea things would be *less*
convenient.

martin