return when desugaring to closures

[Brendan Eich]

On Oct 9, 2008, at 6:44 PM, David Herman wrote:

> Sorry, I was unclear.

No, my fault for missing "declaration form".


> I meant 'lambda' for the expression form and 'define' for the  
> definition form.

Do keywords cost more than concepts?

If people think define name(x) x and lambda (x) x are different  
beasts, then different names win.

If people think of lambdas (what else to call them? not "functions")  
as being named or not when used as expressions, and named when  
declarations (parallel to the existing function forms are in ES3), but  
being different (albeit similar; cleaned-up) function-like beasts,  
then one name for the three forms that parallel the ES3 function forms  
seems better.

It's hard to argue about from first principles outside of the  
specifics of ES3 and modern JS implementations and teaching. The  
specific JS books I know talk about functions having several forms, so  
it seems better to me to keep lambda parallel. I see the appeal of  
define for the declaration (definition, rather) form, though.

/be