From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2003-11-28T13:45:32+09:00
Subject: Re: pre/post question/idea

Hi --

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Joey Gibson wrote:

> I much prefer the foo:pre, foo:post way to this. Of course the first 
> time I saw this (apart from doing AspectJ work in Java) was in Lisp, and 
> what Matz proposed was lifted straight from Lisp. Using 'pre' and 'post' 
> as equivalents of 'def' seems a bit of a hack, to me. I think the 
> foo:pre syntax is more explicit in expressing what you are trying to do 
> that this.

I only wish I had the skill to hack keywords into the language :-)  (On
second thought, maybe I don't :-)  

It's hard to say which of the two syntaxes is more explicit, since if
the one I suggested were adopted, then

  pre x

would *be* the explicit way to do this (just as def is an explicit way
to define methods, etc.).  def x:pre is more eye-catching or distinct,
I guess, but I imagine there might come a time when one said "Why do
pre and post have these distinct, eye-catching forms instead of being
normal keywords like def?"  Hard to predict... it's just something
that occurs to me.


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net