Re: Revised syntax question

[Gerard Huet <Gerard.Huet@inria.fr>]

At 09:34 25/09/00 -0700, Brian Rogoff wrote:
>Hi,
>    I have an issue with the Revised syntax (from OCaml P4, with URL 
>http://caml.inria.fr/camlp4/manual/camlp4023.html). 
>
>How about 
>
>    do e1; e2; e3; done e4
>
>and change while/for to be consistent with this and return a value 
>in done?  
>
>    while e1 
>      do e2; 
>    done e3
>
>    for i = e1 to e2 do e3; done ()
>
>This saves a keyword "return" and looks a bit more consistent, though
>maybe a touch noisier when you don't return a value from a loop. Anyone 
>using Revised have a different opinion?
>
>-- Brian

I hate this return, and actually I do not like this dangling e4. Every 
imperative programming language I used had a list of statements construct,
and from LISP onwards we know how to mix imperative statements and values
(good old progn !). Semantic ayatollahs notwithstanding, it makes perfect
sense to interpret the sequence (s1 ; s2 ; ... ; sn) with operator ";" piping
the state of its first argument into the second one, and returning the value
of the second one. Furthermore it is consistent with the rest of the syntax
to use good old parentheses as begin-end brackets. All you need is to
EXTEND the revised syntax with a 5 line entry for expr at LEVEL "simple".

I usually indent my code
    ( statement 1
    ; statement 2
    ...
    ; statement n
    )
nicely symmetrical to 
    match foo with   (or fun or try expr with)
      [ case 1
      | case 2
      ...
      | case n
      ]
and I read "begin" for "(", "then" for ";" and "end" for ")", although
sometimes I say "returned" when I want to emphasise the returned value.

I'll be glad to communicate the 5 lines of camlp4 to whoever wants to try
this syntax; but all flame should be sent to /dev/null

Cheers,
Gérard