Allen's lambda syntax proposal

[David-Sarah Hopwood]

David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:
> Jon Zeppieri wrote:
[...]
>> The opening brace will need to be on the same line as the formals,
>> otherwise the syntax is ambiguous:
>>
>> ^(x) {
>>   x = x * x
>>   ^(a,b,c,d,e,f,g)
>>   {
>>     x
>>   }
>> }
> 
> Strictly speaking, the syntax is not ambiguous; it just is not parsed
> how you might expect. The semicolons would be inserted in this example
> as follows:
> 
>   ^(x) {
>     x = (x * x)^(a, b, c, d, e, f, g);
>     { x; }
>   };
> 
> Arguably, the problem here is that semicolon insertion is and always
> was a bad idea.
> 
>> And, if it is on the same line, it's still bad for a top-down parser:
>>
>> ^(x) {
>>   x = x * x
>>   ^(a,b,c,d,e,f,g) {x}
>> }
> 
> Same result as above.

Sorry, not the same result. This would be formally a syntax error,
although note that some implementations do perform semicolon insertion
even at non-line-boundaries.

-- 
David-Sarah Hopwood