Re: [PROPOSAL] [PATCH] simple method call

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

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Thomas Jericke <tjericke@indel.ch> wrote:
> Essentially, once you allow metamethods to be defined you can't recognize
> calls any more by looking at the code.

Ah, but metamethods are not just any implicit function call.  We could
make 't.a = 0' do anything, like launch a rocket, but generally this
is an abuse. It really is the kind of thing that gave C++ a bad name.

So, I'd also vote for keeping function call syntax straightforward -
we know the rules, no need for new ones.  Leaving out () feels like a
very Pascal-like thing - I remember Bertrand Meyer defending it in
Eiffel - he reckoned that the user of an object's field need not know
_how_ it is implemented.  So read-only properties, basically.

Moonscript idiom is to use ! instead of (), which at least makes the
call obvious.  But I don't think it adds much to the party here - the
cool Moonscript function call feature is that the effective precedence
of the call operator is very low, so you often don't need parens at
all.  Nice for interactive DSLs.