Re: Short function definition syntax; thoughts on Lua (was Re: [ANN] GSL Shell new beta release...)

[Christopher Eykamp <chris@...>]

By changing the whitespace, you can make the current syntax much easier 
to read:

function(x, y, z)    return x + y + z   end

or, perhaps,

function(x, y, z)   return(x + y + z)   end


Chris


Philippe Lhoste wrote:
> On 04/12/2009 11:12, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo wrote:
> > And one possible syntax could be
> >     function (x,y,z)=x+y*z
>
> Or:
>   function (x, y, z) x + y * z end
>
> which isn't much longer (even more looking at the proposed -> 
> alternative...), remains close of current syntax and clearly defines 
> where the expression ends.
> Actually, it only makes 'return' optional, which isn't unlike JavaFX 
> (which might have taken the idea from some other language(s)) which 
> considers that the last expression of a function is the return value 
> of that function.
>
> People will find 'function' still too verbose, but I am not fan of |x| 
> or \x syntaxes within Lua which doesn't abuse of such notations (they 
> are fines in themselves, of course).
>
> So perhaps we can reuse some keyword in a different context (I might 
> miss some syntactic ambiguity, though), eg.:
>
>   do: (x, y, z) x + y * z end