> On Apr 4, 2016, at 7:25 AM, Jim Malak via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org>
> wrote:
>
> My background going into Swift was everything but JavaScript.
Have you used Ruby or Python, both of which use a “def” keyword before a
definition? And come to think of it, I think most non-C-derived languages use
some sort of keyword before a function definition. Just to name two language
families, LISP uses “def” and Pascal uses “function” or “procedure”.
So C (and C++ and Java and C#…) may be the oddballs here in not using a
keyword, along with some functional languages.
> One thing I often wondered about (usually every time I forgot to type it) is
> what purpose does requiring the keyword “func” serve when defining or
> decaling a function in Swift. I am not a compiler expert but intuitively it
> would seem that the function signature could be readily recognized by the
> complier and people alike with the presences of the ()’s at the end.
I can’t speak for the details of Swift’s language grammar. I do know that
adding not-strictly-necessary redundancies like this to a grammar is very
useful for helping the parser understand the intended meaning of a syntax
error, and thereby producing a meaningful error message. (This is one of the
reasons C++ error messages can be notoriously unhelpful: the syntax is so
complex with so many possible ambiguities, that the error message may refer to
a language construct that you weren’t even intending to use.)
—Jens
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