From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-09-04T16:00:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

Hi,

In message "Re: Ruby aesthetics"
    on 02/09/04, Tim Hammerquist <tim@vegeta.ath.cx> writes:

|>   * somehow "significant indentation" brings separation
|>     betweeen expression and statement.  I don't like this.  I
|>     feel this is a restriction for no reason.  for example, in
|>     Python, lambda body must be an expression.  you have to
|>     define a named function if you want a function which body
|>     contains statements.
|
|I don't like this either, but I thought the sig. indent was a
|completely separate mantra from the "no statements in most places
|they would be useful" concept.  I don't see why you can't have
|sig. indent w/o Python's annoying exclusion of statements from
|conditional contexts.

Perhaps because it is very hard to consider a block by indentation as
an expression for human recognition.  In Ruby we can,

  inc = array.collect do |x|
    p x  # for debugging purpose
    x + 1
  end

but using significant indentation, 

  inc = map(array, lambda x:
                      print x
                      x + 1)

makes me feel weird.  Maybe this comes from mixing expression grouping
by parenthesises, and statement grouping by indentation.

							matz.