New private names proposal

[David Herman]

On Dec 23, 2010, at 5:03 PM, David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:

> On 2010-12-23 23:55, David Herman wrote:
>> On Dec 23, 2010, at 4:27 PM, David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:
>> 
>>> We don't know whether [] will be changed
>>> at all. (In the proposal to add a @ or .# operator, it isn't.)
>> 
>> Hm, this looks like a pretty serious misunderstanding of the private names proposal.
> 
> I was not referring to the private names proposal, but to the more recent
> suggestions from various people to add a @ or .# operator instead of
> changing []. (I should not have referred to those suggestions as a proposal.
> Careless editing, sorry.)

a) I don't recall seeing people suggesting adding a .# operator instead of changing '[]', but rather instead of changing '.'. To wit, the difference is between:

    private #x;
    ... obj.#x ...

and

    private x;
    ... obj.x ...

In both versions, it's also possible to do:

    var x = gensym();
    ... obj[x] ...

But this is irrelevant, since:

b) You're shifting the terms of the debate anyway. You can't decide for yourself what you want others to propose so you can argue with your favorite strawman. All along, Allen, Brendan, and I have been talking about a proposal wherein property names are first-class values that are usable as property names. This is not separable from the proposal.

Dave