On 5/10/12, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>
> On 10.05.2012, at 13:25, H. Hirzel wrote:
>
>> On 5/10/12, Levente Uzonyi <leves at elte.hu> wrote:
>>> So it's not about dynamic arrays, but arrays created with the brace
>>> syntax. And yes, that was introduced in Squeak.
>>
>> Any idea when and for which reason?
>
> Dan Ingalls, 1997: "Larry Tesler added the Curly Brace construct to Apple
> Smalltalk back around 1985, and there it sat in Apple's APDA (Apple
> Programmer and Developer Association) Smalltalk release for about a decade.
> Then we resurrected that image as the basis of Squeak, and I've never
> bothered to tear it out."
>
> More at
> http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/mark.guzdial/squeak/notes/curlybraces.html
>
> - Bert -



Thanks for the link Bert,

<citation>
David N. Smith wrote:
Curly braces are currently used in Squeak to construct
runtime-evaluated collections
</citation>.

The question is -- is there some more documentation than just some
clippings from an email correspondence?

If I understand you correctly people 'forgot' to take them out and so
this syntax stayed.

Is it used much?

Would it be possible to deprecate this usage and

reuse the syntax for  implementing literal dictionaries 'JSON style'?

--Hannes