On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > > Bill Page writes: > > | panAxiom developers, > | > | I just wanted to mention something here that I just learned about how > | the Axiom interpreter handles option arguments. When discovering how > | the 'draw' operations in Axiom processes optional arguments, e.g. > | > | draw(sin(x), x=1..10, title=="sin function") > > Hmm, I thought I already mentioned this in discussions with Ralf ;-/ >
Sorry I missed it. Can you please tell me wihich list? When? > | > | I realized the interpreter does something rather clever but probably > | quite unexpected. > > It is the post parser doing it. And I don't like it -- the irony is > that I made Boot do the same. > > | The problem is that (unlike Aldor) SPAD does not > | provide built-in support for calling functions with optional > | arguments. Instead what it does is collect all the arguments > | containing == into a List *and* then it applies the name to the > | left of == as a function to the value on the right. So much to > | my surprize: > > Quite disgusting, no? >... Weird at least, but oddly effective as a representatio. Too bad it increases the distance between the interpreter and compiler languages. > | What do you think? Do you like that, or is this something that > | should be implemented in a deeper way? > > I don't like it: For example, I cannot '==' to mean `definition' > in expressions -- but I already had that debate with Ralf. > Perhaps it would be better to provide a function to which == maps, e.g. x == y ==> OPTARG(x,y) which does by default what the interpreter wants for now but which allows customization? Regards, Bill Page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php _______________________________________________ open-axiom-devel mailing list open-axiom-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-axiom-devel
