> Just curious > - what folks think of fixed-positional-keyword params > - whether it was considered for Clojure
It's difficult to image that keyword params will be considered in languages where they aren't folklore, as they are in Smalltalk, Objective-C, and Self. Unlike Smtalltalk and Self, where keywords do real work --they name the selector and are separators at the call place-- in other languages they'd be annotations and maybe perceived as redundant, e.g. a call like: (circle x y radius) is readable without keywords. In Smtalltalk a single-arg keyword message is readable because the syntax gets the received out of the way to the left: 5.0 raisedTo: 3 where #raisedTo: is both the selector and keyword. In Clojure it wouldn't look as simple and it'd introduce the inconsistency that the first argument isn't "keyed". Another aspect is of course high-order functions, where keywords make things difficult at the call place and imposible inside the called function. Having to make a feature optional when things get tough using it usualy gets it scrapped. Smalltalk's "high-order methods" don't have a problem because a method to call is passed using its symbol (ie, its keywords) not as value. BTW, which Smalltalk do you use? I've never seen the prefix you mentioned. AFAIK, a keyword selector is just the concat of its keys. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
