[ruby-talk:16506] Re: Playing with Ruby Syntax (was: Initial thoughts about Ruby From a Smalltalk Programmer)

In article <[e-mail]>,
Dave Thomas <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>However, some folks feel that this is getting too close to
>Smalltalk. I'm not sure I see why that's a valid objection, but I'd
>like to see it discussed.

This may be a bit of a tangent, but I've recently noticed that Ruby's
syntax can be remarkably like C, Lisp and reversed Forth, depending on
one's inclination, to a degree I wouldn't have previously imagined...

for example, if 'foo' and 'bar' are methods, and 'x' is some variable,
you can express:

	foo(bar(x))	# looks like C
	(foo(bar x))	# looks like LISP
	foo bar x	# looks like Forth (read right to left)

What I find interesting about it is that Lisp and Forth have extremely
simple, yet powerful syntaxes.  And as such, in both languages, even
keywords like "if" and "while" can be thought of not as special
constructs only understood by compilers, but just functions like any
other functions a user might write.

So, one perverse thought I had is that, in Ruby, a construct like

	if condition
	    ...
	end

is not syntactically much different from

	obj.each do 
	    ...
	end

so why not just make 'if' be a method, just as obj.each is?   And
maybe other keywords as well.  Thus, customizing keywords or adding
keywords is just a simple matter of adding or redefining methods, just
as it is in Lisp or Forth.

--Mirian