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

[Dave Herman]

> This is a trick question! We already have function expressions with a
> 'function' head and a '{...}' body. Dropping the 'return' and braces as
> a *convenience*.

Not a trick question -- of course we already have functions that *are* 
expressions; the question is whether all the syntactic forms of 
functions (i.e., both function declarations and function expressions) 
have a variant where the *body* is an expression.

It's precisely this convenience I'm talking about. In fact, when writing 
in a functional style, this convenience adds up pretty quickly. Try 
writing a curried function with "return" and curlies -- it's painful, 
*especially* because of the sneaky requirement that return can't be 
followed by a newline!

     function f(x) {
         return function (y) {
             return function (z) {
                 return x + y + z;
             }
         }
     }

vs.

     f(x) => (y) => (z) => (x + y + z)

or

     function f(x) (y) => (z) => (x + y + z)

I didn't quite follow your summary. Indulge my OCD and let me be 
painfully explicit. :) Here are all the options I think we're talking 
about, individually labelled (a) through (f). (Ignoring some irrelevant 
details like named function expressions.)

    function-expression
        ::= "function" id? "(" formals ")" block           (a)
         |  "function" id? "(" formals ")" expression      (b)
         |  "function" id? "(" formals ")" "=>" expression (c)
         |  "(" formals ")" "=>" expression                (d)

    function-declaration
        ::= "function" id "(" formals ")" block            (e)
         |  "function" id "(" formals" ")" expression      (f)
         |  "function" id "(" formals" ")" "=>" expression (g)
         |  id "(" formals ")" "=>" expression             (h)

    expression ::= ... | function-expression
    declaration ::= ... | function-declaration

I'm in favor of allowing (a), (c), (d), (e), and (g). I think that was 
Tucker's proposal just now.

Dave