At 20:28 -0800 1/10/2000, Stephen Travis Pope wrote:
>"Martin B. Pomije" wrote:
>>
>>  Has anybody on this list ever contemplated incorporating CL style macros
>>  into Smalltalk?  Or am I just stuck in Lispish thinking?
>
>I think the latter ("stuck in Lispish thinking"). I, too, came to
>Smalltalk from LISP, and initially missed several features of LISP, but
>the only one I still pine after is multiple value returns.

I miss them, too, since I spent a while programming in PostScript; 
the symmetry of sending and returning is so nice it made me like a 
language that is difficult to love, and I've missed multiple returns 
ever since.

I came up with some syntax for multiple return values in Squeak. I 
don't offhand see any syntax conflicts and I don't have a clue how to 
make it work efficiently at runtime, but it may be something to throw 
rocks at. I'm concerned about how often such a feature would really 
be used; is it worth making syntax changes?

Multiple assignment:   (a b c) := self get3things.

Returning values:      ^ x . y squared . z asInteger

See attachment for details.

Dave
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_______________________________
David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
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