Re: Lightweight syntax: a dissident view

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Paul Hudson <phudson@pobox.com> wrote:
> a common higher order function that is just for its side-effects. Of course,
> the function could always return a value that's ignored.

Which is the Lua way ...

Trying to do too much with short forms will cause confusion. We can do
a lot with a simple expression.

(The problem that statements-are-not-expressions is something else and
interesting in its own right, e.g. return if a > b then 10 else 20
end.  If you think that's not part of the Lua tradition, remember that
Algol 68 worked like this)

Here's an interesting take on the problem from a slightly different
angle, well worth reading carefully:

http://lua-users.org/wiki/StatementsInExpressions

steve d.