Expression closures - use-cases for shortcut lambda syntax (blocks)

[Brendan Eich]

On Mar 15, 2007, at 6:55 PM, Peter Hall wrote:

> I think, once I've figured out how to actually type "λ" on my UK
> keyboard (I actually don't know how to enter 0x03BB in my keyboard, I
> had to paste from charmap), I might as well have typed "function(".

Or at least "\" ;-).

> Also, "λ" is a perfectly permissable character for an identifier.
> Wouldn't it cause problems to  give it special meaning? (for Greeks
> especially)

Yes, you are right -- ES3 allows Unicode identifiers, so this would  
not be a backward compatible change. It seems excessive anyway, if \ 
(x)x is acceptable for (lambda (x) x).

/be