On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 ajalis at twu.net wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 11, 2000 at 04:54:31PM -0500, Bijan Parsia wrote:
[snip]
> Gnu Smalltalk is somewhat like this.

I suspected.

> Why not use Gnu Smalltalk's syntax here

If you mean in SqueakScripts, no reason. If you mean in my note, well
because I didn't know Gnu Smalltalk's syntax off hand ;)

> (instead of 
> defining keywords like "def").

def! A *keyword*! Perish the thought! It was an implicit script global
which holds an instance of "BlockMapper". BlockMapper takes the keyword
argument (a block) and the keyword selector (say, 'testMethod:') and makes
a temp (#testMethod) and then assignes the argumetn to it.

So,

	def testMethod: [:x | x + x]

Is equivalent to:
	| def |
	def := BlockMapper onCurrentScript.
	def testMethod: [:x | x + x].

And this is equivalent to

	| testMethod |
	testMethod := [:x | x + x].

(Of course, there's some needed trickery to deal with the fact that
blocks aren't closures yet.)

And all this, of course, is fakery, since I haven't written anything like
this (yet ;)). It was just meant to illustrate the kinds of considerations
one might face. If one's target audience is hard core smalltalkers, I
suspect that any sugar is a pain in the tuckus. If the point is making a
generally useful tool even for those who may not do more than write little
5-10 line scripts, perhpas the sugar is a good thing.

(I will check out the Gnu Smalltalk script syntax, though. :))

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.