Re: Arrow function expressions in PHP

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 12:28 PM, Anthony Ferrara <ircmaxell@gmail.com> wrote: > Nikita and all, > > > I don't think there was a dozen of different ideas, I could only find > those > > about lambda(arg-list; use-list; expression) and > > variations of it with > > different keywords and different return-type syntax. > > I do understand that this is quite subjective, but neither this syntax > nor > > fn(arg-list; use-list) expression look obvious and easily > > readable to > me. > > The problem is that semicolons are non-obvious, especially in a > context where commas are used (and traditionally used). > > Example, tell the difference quickly between > > fn($a, $b; $c) => $a + $b + $c; > > and > > fn($a; $b, $c) => $a + $b + $c. > > At a glance, they are identical. You have to actually look at each > item to realize that there's a difference. At least with use() there's > a syntactical separator there to draw your eye to the contextually > relevant information. True. But a developer can mitigate with judicious white-space: fn($a, $b ; $c) => $a+$b+$c Or we can figure out some other such symbol. Worse casing no white space, brain storming: fn($a,$b:$c) => $a+$b+$c // not much better fn($a,$b!$c) => $a+$b+$c // better, but looks like not fn($a,$b&$c) => $a+$b+$c // lost in the noise, looks like bitwise fn($a,$b%$c) => $a+$b+$c // perl jibberish, looks modulo fn($a,$b--$c) => $a+$b+$c // multi-char, looks like decrement fn($a,$b::$c) => $a+$b+$c // maybe, kinda confusing // my favorite fn($a, $b @ $c) => $a + $b + $c; // vs. function ($a, $b) use ($c) { return $a + $b + $c; } // a space savings of 100% // unambiguous parsing // no backtracing // no new rules to learn about scope pulling // works if we later support '*' for scope pulling