Well, the parens are only required within contexts where commas already
have a meaning, such as in argument lists. Outside of those contexts, only
the comma is required. I just checked an implementation of this into
trunk:
C:\ORexxDev\builds\install>rexx \orexxdev\bugs\test.rex
2 *-* a = "Rick", "Mike"
3 *-* say a~class
The Array class
4 *-* say a~size
2
5 *-* say a~items
2
6 *-* say a[1] a[2]
Rick Mike
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Gil Barmwater <[email protected]>
wrote:
> This discussion reminded me of some experimenting I did about 5 years ago
> when I was trying to learn something about Python and Ruby. The suggested
> syntactic sugar - variable = ['First','Second','Third'] - is how one
> defines a "list" in Python and is called an "array literal" in Ruby. I
> played with different ways to do something like this with ooRexx using what
> was available, i.e. without enhancing the language. The best approach that
> I found involved 1) defining a one-character named class, 2) defining a
> "[]" class method on that class, and 3) having that method return the
> arguments as an array. So if the class was named V (for vector), the
> example would read: variable = .V['First','Second','Third']. You get the
> shortened syntax for creating the array at the "cost" of entering two
> additional characters, the dot and the class name (V). I played with
> different class names (one might want A for array for example) including
> using special characters (like ?. !, and _) since they are less likely to
> "clash" with other user-written class names. I even found that . (dot) is
> a valid class name! So ..[1,2] would work but it just looks too strange!
> The implementation is only three lines of code:
>
> ::class v
> ::method "[]" class
> return arg(1,A)
>
> I also found that once you had a shortened syntax for specifying an array,
> writing an Of method for the Map Collection classes is very easy (and very
> worthwhile!).
>
> Having said all that, I fully support the use of commas inside parentheses
> as the preferred way to implement a shortened syntax for specifying an
> array.
>
>
> On 9/18/2014 9:57 AM, Sahananda (Jon) Wolfers wrote:
>
> Hi Rick,
>
> I entirely understand your concerns about the square brackets.
> I don't know whether this is the time to spend our gold. I'm interested
> to hear what others say.
>
> I like the assignment to map-collections
>
> A further thought. I have also seen other languages parsing an array
> into variables thus:
>
> [var1,var2,var3] = .array~of(value1, value2, value3)
>
> but I think that is rather un-rexxish and certainly not just syntactic
> sugar and imho is included in the other languages because of their poverty
> of decent collections.
>
> just my 2p worth
>
> Jon
>
> On 18 September 2014 14:24, Rick McGuire <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I confess that I've been wanting a shortcut for creating arrays for a
>> long time and have even considered submitting this feature request myself.
>> This is not something difficult to implement, but my resistance to doing
>> this has more to do with the fact that it introduces new syntax.
>>
>> Using square brackets for purposes other than message invocations has
>> always been one of those "back pocket" syntax elements that have been held
>> in reserve until a use that was good enough to say "yes, this is really
>> what I want to use this for.". Other uses for brackets I've considered in
>> the past have been multi-line literals and creating variable references.
>> This has always been a balancing act. You don't want to use this on
>> something trivial, but at the same time, you don't want to be so resistant
>> to using it that you have effectively removed from being a possibility.
>> Curly braces have been in this category for a VERY long time. We need to
>> consider if "syntactic" sugar is important enough use for this syntactic
>> concept.
>>
>> Admittedly, array objects are very important in ooRexx. They pop up in
>> lots of situations as return values and also as arguments to both
>> instructions and methods. Are they important enough that they get the
>> special syntax rather than some other object type? That needs to be
>> considered. There are a few obvious places where this might make a lot of
>> sense. Jon shows the obvious assignment case, but this would be fairly
>> useful for things like DO OVER
>>
>> do name over ["Mike", "Jon", "David"]
>>
>> looks nicer than
>>
>> do name over .array~of("Mike", "Jon", "David")
>>
>> and feels a bit more natural and integrate.
>>
>> Being able to create arrays without a lot of extra syntax would make
>> something like OF methods for map collections workable. For example,
>>
>> locs = .directory~of(["Rick", "USA"], ["Mike", "UK"])
>>
>> where you are using the array syntax to create index/value pairs for
>> insertion into the directory.
>>
>> Anyway, I've laid out the issues as I see them. I think this is
>> something that needs a bit of discussion before a decision is made because
>> of the syntax issues. The 5.0 release I've been working on would be a good
>> place to introduce this concept.
>>
>> Rick
>>
>> Rick
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Jon Wolfers <[email protected]>
>> Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 5:08 AM
>> Subject: [oorexx:feature-requests] #613 Syntactic sugar for array creation
>> To: Ticket 613 <[email protected]>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>>
>> ** [feature-requests:#613] Syntactic sugar for array creation**
>>
>> **Status:** unread
>> **Milestone:** None
>> **Created:** Thu Sep 18, 2014 09:08 AM UTC by Jon Wolfers
>> **Last Updated:** Thu Sep 18, 2014 09:08 AM UTC
>> **Owner:** nobody
>>
>> Just an idea.
>>
>> How about a bit of syntactic sugar such that
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>> variable = ['First','Second','Third']
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>> is equivalent to
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>> variable = .array~of('First','Second','Third')
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>> It could also be allowed for cases like
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>> do variable over ['First','Second','Third']
>> ...
>> end
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>>
>>
>> I have seen this in other languages and think it is quite neat
>>
>> Jon
>>
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Sent from sourceforge.net because you indicated interest in <
>> https://sourceforge.net/p/oorexx/feature-requests/613/>
>>
>> To unsubscribe from further messages, please visit <
>> https://sourceforge.net/auth/subscriptions/>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Want excitement?
>> Manually upgrade your production database.
>> When you want reliability, choose Perforce
>> Perforce version control. Predictably reliable.
>>
>> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157508191&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
>> _______________________________________________
>> Oorexx-devel mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-devel
>>
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Want excitement?
> Manually upgrade your production database.
> When you want reliability, choose Perforce
> Perforce version control. Predictably
> reliable.http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157508191&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Oorexx-devel mailing
> [email protected]https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-devel
>
>
> --
> Gil Barmwater
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Meet PCI DSS 3.0 Compliance Requirements with EventLog Analyzer
> Achieve PCI DSS 3.0 Compliant Status with Out-of-the-box PCI DSS Reports
> Are you Audit-Ready for PCI DSS 3.0 Compliance? Download White paper
> Comply to PCI DSS 3.0 Requirement 10 and 11.5 with EventLog Analyzer
>
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=154622311&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
> _______________________________________________
> Oorexx-devel mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-devel
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meet PCI DSS 3.0 Compliance Requirements with EventLog Analyzer
Achieve PCI DSS 3.0 Compliant Status with Out-of-the-box PCI DSS Reports
Are you Audit-Ready for PCI DSS 3.0 Compliance? Download White paper
Comply to PCI DSS 3.0 Requirement 10 and 11.5 with EventLog Analyzer
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=154622311&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
_______________________________________________
Oorexx-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-devel
