Re: Proposal: Array syntax

Marco Tabini wrote:

George Schlossnagle wrote:

On Nov 5, 2003, at 1:29 PM, Marco Tabini wrote:

$a = [1,2,$b[11]] is semantically inconsistent.

How so? Is

I think I've already explained why.

Not really understandable, though.

foo(array(1,2)); semantically inconsistent? On one hand () is used with a language construct (array()), whereas in the other context it indicates arguments to a function. I think that is what he meant by 'grouping' and 'application'.

Actually, I think it meant something else. In any case, semantically you can still think of array() as a function (until you throw in key declarations, of course ;) )

Yup, I told you I meant something different (although on the same line of reasoning). I think you misunderstand "semantics", anyway. You should not think of array() as a function, as basically everything else except to the syntax is different to "real" functions, consider call_user_func('array', 1, 2, 3) or array_map('array', array(1, 2, 3), array("Foo", "Bar", "Baz")); How much better would look map('array', [1..3], ["Foo", "Bar", "Baz"]); anyway.. (although we really should not argue about that, as it's simply taste).

Similar tokens have different syntactical meaning all over the language. Compare '<<' and '<<<'. To me that is no diffent that <variable>[] and [].

Again, that's not a good reason to introduce more.

That is a statement backed up by good argumentation. :)