On 2/12/03 3:58 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> From what I remember of this thread, you had suggested tags to have a
> result.
> But tags DO have a result: namely, an XML output.
> So for the processing of XML objects, jelly IS functional.
> Trouble of course start if you want your tags to return anything else
> than XML. And this is the place where I suggested an extension for
> being functional is to be inserted.
Agreed: the XMLOutput is an output stream, not a functional result. It's
only really useful if I want to return text, not if I want to return an
Action to whatever happens to be enclosing the <action> tag. (Which is in
fact exactly what I want to do.)
> There's one seducing feature seen in some functional languages that I
> feel you forgot: lazy evaluation: e.g. that an expression is to be
> evaluated only when it's needed. This is missing just about everywhere
> but I have the impression that making something such in Jelly would be
> do-able.
Good point! Jelly has this already, at least at the tag level. Just look at
the Swing <action> tag. It is, indeed, wonderful (though I worry about the
memory overhead). One could argue that attributes might also benefit from
lazy evaluation, but I don't currently feel the need to push for that. :-)
Maybe you can get that effect through clever use of the Expression
interface, but I don't know.
.T.
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