Re: ideas for lambda syntax

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2013/4/9 Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com>:

> Lua's existing syntax *is* lambda syntax, but for the sake of
> portability the three symbols required are spelt out with keywords.

Portability-shmortability. Get yourself a font that displays all
of Unicode properly and configure your keyboard to make the
Unicode characters you need with the alternate graphic key.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key

The attached patch to Lua 5.2 allows the syntax

    ∆(a,b) → a+b ⋄

Actually, all Lua keywords have been replaced by single Unicode
symbols, as a service to those who find Lua code obfuscated when
using English words like 'function' and 'return' instead of symbols.

Here is a sample:

 ⊣ i ∊ pairs(_G) ⊢ print(i) ⋄  -- prints the global table
 ⍳ 2<3 ⊥ print(∪) ⊤ print(∩) ⋄ -- prints "true"

The mapping of Unicode symbols to Lua terminals is defined
in the patch to llex.c.

Attachment: unicode-alphabetic.patch
Description: Binary data