At Thu, 9 May 2013 16:22:54 +0200, Laurent wrote: > On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Matthew Flatt <mfl...@cs.utah.edu> wrote: > > > Anything is open for discussion, but speaking for myself, I'm not > > interested in revisiting keyword syntax or case sensitivity. > > > > I've always wondered why the syntax of keywords implied two elements: the > #:keyword and the identifier. > I find that quite heavy for procedure headers, and most of the time I use > the same symbol for the identifier and the keyword (and when I don't it's > because I'm simply lazy and use a shorter identifier). > > Is there a rationale somewhere for that?
The rationale is to make function definitions have the same shape as function calls. For example, in (define (f x) ....) the `(f x)' imitates the shape of a call, which has formal-argument variables replaced with actual-argument expressions: (f 5) Similarly, in (define (f x #:mode m) ....) the `(f x #:mode m)' reflects the shape of a call (f 5 #:mode 'fast) > Would it be a bad idea for Racket2 to consider that keyword identifiers are > the same as the keyword without the `#:' ? I agree that it sometimes feels redundant to write both a keyword and an identifier in a function's formal arguments, since they're often spelled the same way. I can only say that I've tried things that way, and I prefer the current way (so, I think I'd vote to keep it as-is). _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
