Re: About those parenthesis....

"Kaz Kylheku" <kkylheku@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

>> I like parenthesis and prefix from beginning. However, I think
>> that usual f(x,y,z) would be better choice than (f x y z).
>
> The commas don't serve any purpose, other than to add clutter.
> So a better notation than f(x, y, z) is quite simply f(x y z).

The commas do serve a purpose: they avoid extra parens if arguments
are not self-delimiting, as in f(x - 1, x + 1).

> I have programmed with Lisp-like semantics using the f(x,y,z) syntax.
> It's ugly. The comas really are a problem.

Indeed they are quite ugly if the f(x,y,z) syntax is used for all
syntactic constructs.

> The f(x y z) notation is also very poor when it comes to subexpressions
> which do not represent an operation f being applied to arguments x y z.

Of course nobody in the right mind would use f(x y z) or f(x,y,z)
to denote a four-element list.

But it doesn't matter, unless you take for granted that function
application must be represented by a list consisting of the function
name followed by the arguments.

> Even when the first symbol /is/ an operator, it's not more important
> than the other two symbols.

I disagree. It's treated so much differently from the arguments
(especially in Lisp where it's not interpreted as an expression)
that this is not a valid reason for making it look like one of the
arguments. There might be other reasons, but this argument is flawed.

--
__("< Marcin Kowalczyk
\__/ qrczak@xxxxxxxxxx
^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/
.

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