Re: Are parenthesis-free calls a Good? (was Re: patch: C-style string lexing)

[Matthew Paul Del Buono <delbu9c1@...>]

>I know from Lua's early history and from my own early Lua programming
>that 'f{}' can be useful, especially in configuration files. But over
>the years I shed my "Wow! This is neat!" view and replaced it with one
>that is 'purer'. Now I nearly always use 'f({})' and 'f("A")'; I see the
>parentheses as a clearer, more consistent indication of what is actually
>happening - a function call.



And many other people still use Lua for configuration files, and for configuration files, a

title "Parameter"
color {r=1, g=1, b=0.5}


Can make much more sense. Moreover, I wrote a system (and I know others exist that allow you) to write classes easily:

class "foo" (extends "bar") {
  var1 = 4;
  var2 = 3;
};


I would be rather annoyed if that capability were removed.

>My future vision of Lua sees these forms in the same way that I view the
>old 'n' field for arrays ('#' is more elegant). I suppose the forms will
>stay until there is another more compelling form that is syntactically
>mutually exclusive. The key thing being 'more compelling', which I don't
>believe is true for this particular patch.
>
>Doug
>
>-- 
>Innovative Concepts, Inc. www.innocon.com 703-893-2007 x220


You may be right, it makes it harder to see what is going on. But to some people that's not necessary. To the people writing configuration files, they don't really need to know it's a function call. They see a syntax, they use it. They might not even know they're programming.

-- Matthew P. Del Buono a.k.a. Shirik