Block Lambdas: break and continue

[Allen Wirfs-Brock]

On Jan 14, 2012, at 6:46 PM, Brendan Eich wrote:

> Adding escape continuations is another case of warty + shiny ~~~> shiny promised land hope as the evolutionary game we have to play on the web. Still, I'm in favor of escape continuations but I do not want to bundle them with block-lambdas. One mountain to climb at a time.

With block lambdas that support the return statement we already have escape continuations:

function callWithEscapeContinuation(blockWithOneArg) {
    let escapeContinuation = {|value| return value};
    return blockWithOneArg(escapeContinuation);
}



result = callWithEscapeContinuation( {|escape|
   ...
   if (cond) escape();
   ...
};
...

I used  the Smalltalk equivalent [:v| ^v] all over the place in the implementation of the Smalltalk resumption-based exception handling system.  In fact, with block lambdas and try-finally  (not no catch).  I could replicate the full Smalltalk-style EHS in JavaScript.  (Not to argue that resumable exceptions are really that good of an idea).

Allen
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