As I read it, the original question was about the actual keyword - e.g. the word "BEGIN" - as distinct from the block it's attached to. Though I agree we need a general term for the latter, the name "event block" seems to imply that "BEGIN" et al are events, which might be ok or might cause confusion with more thoroughly event-driven programming models.
On 4/10/08, Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 08:52:38AM -0700, jerry gay wrote: > : On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 10:31 PM, John M. Dlugosz > : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > : > Consider the words that may be used to introduce a block for a special > : > purpose, like > : > > : > BEGIN > : > END > : > INIT > : > CATCH > : > etc. > : > > : > What do you call those? They are not even "special named blocks" > because > : > that is not the block name (that already means something). > : > > : syntactically speaking, http://svn.pugscode.org/pugs/src/perl6/STD.pm > : groups them in <statement_control>, just like 'if' and 'for'. > : semantically speaking, i don't have a clever or unique name for them, > : other than what larry has already come up with. > > It's a really good question, particularly because it's so exposed to the > user, so it needs to be something not too unwieldy. Semantically, they > are closures that are attached as properties of the surrounding lexical > scope, and since they're compile-time properties, they're declarative. > So we've been calling them closure traits. But I pretty certain we > should be using the term "block" here instead, even though they are > technically closures (or potentially closures, depending on how you > define that). But people will generally prefer the more concrete > "block" if there are always curlies involved, and people are already > used to saying "BEGIN block" and such. > > And "traits" is also problematic; it says what they are, but not really > what they do. They're really "come froms" with predefined names that > are automatically called at the appropriate time. So I think perhaps > the best term for them might be something more like "event blocks", > blocks that are called if and when a particular event happens. That's > a more user-oriented definition. > > Larry > -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
