Interesting! I submitted a Phep a while back to implement a compile-time literal syntax ##() as seen in Dolphin Smalltalk, with literal collections like this as a major (though not exclusive) use-case. At the time I couldn't think of a way to do better for arbitrary collections, but this is a very natural extension of the brace-array syntax—clever use of the block-argument-esque leading colon. I still like some things about the flexibility of the compile-time literal approach, but this certainly has it beat for terseness in the common case!
One question about the implementation—does it reduce straightforwardly to instantiation and repeated sends of `add:`, or a single `withAll:` or similar, or does it depend on knowledge of the underlying collection implementation? Put another way, would it work with a custom collection class? What about a class that isn't a descendant of Collection at all, but understands the right protocol? On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 3:16 PM Noury Bouraqadi <[email protected]> wrote: > Cool! > > Noury > On Sep 18 2023, at 5:20 pm, stephane ducasse <[email protected]> > wrote: > > In a Phep005 soon available > > testLiteralSet > > | compiler | > compiler := OpalCompiler new. > compiler compilationContext parserClass: RBParserLiteralCollection. > self assert: (compiler evaluate: > '{ :Set 1 . 2 . 1}' ) > > equals: #(1 2) asSet. > > > > testOrderedCollection > > | compiler | > compiler := OpalCompiler new. > compiler compilationContext parserClass: RBParserLiteralCollection. > self assert: (compiler evaluate: > '{ :OrderedCollection 1 . 2 . 1 . 3}' ) > > equals: #(1 2 1 3) asOrderedCollection. > > > testDictionary > > | compiler dict | > compiler := OpalCompiler new. > compiler compilationContext parserClass: RBParserLiteralCollection. > dict := (compiler evaluate: > '{ :Dictionary #a -> 33 . #b -> 44}' ). > self assert: (dict at: #a) equals: 33 > >
