Re: Ternary operator patch

[Patrick Donnelly <batrick@...>]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Roberto Ierusalimschy
<roberto@inf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 2:42 AM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>> > Do you really think you can keep children from growing up?
>>
>> Can you be less cryptic please, and explain what you think the
>> long-term issues are? I think this is a useful addition too.
>
> I have an issue, but I am not sure it is a "long-term" one. I think
> the proposed syntax, without "end", will be quite confusing to some
> people, given that the almost identical if command must have "end".
> On the other hand, a syntax with "end" is cumbersome.

I believe the "if" looks nice but is unnecessary and may be confusing.
Something like:

a = b then x else y

would be shorter (after all, isn't that the reason we do this?). I
think a better choice for the ternary operator keywords would make it
even clearer. I considered something like this:

a = x when b else y

That messes up the usual order so it's unlikely to be accepted.

For what it's worth, I'm definitely in the boat that we need a builtin
ternary operator. The "b and x or y" idiom is just too confusing to
newcomers. Most don't ever learn what it really means and get bitten
by bugs when x is false/nil.

-- 
- Patrick Donnelly