Re: Shorthand for appending to a table (was Re: 5.2 feature list?)

[David Jones <drj@...>]

On 12 Sep 2006, at 10:23, Paul Hudson wrote:

> I'm with some of the other posters.
>
> t[] = value
>
> does not clearly say "append value to t" to me.
>
> If we really need
>
> t[#t+1] = value
>
> to go faster, then the parser could be changed to recognise it as a  
> special
> case?

Actually no-one was arguing it should go faster, merely that it  
should be easier to type.  There are two legitimate concerns as I see  
it:

1) when t is a long name.  Could be particularly embarrassing if you  
misspell it (personally I don't like long names, but hey)

2) when t is a more complex expression, eg: f(x)[#? + 1] = value.

I'm always very loath to suggest or support more syntax, but how  
about if '#' on its on in an expression inside [] were to mean the  
length of the table being indexed.  So you could go:

t[#+1] = value

It's pretty clear, and almost syntactically unambiguous.

drj