🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TMB.92Sep29100759@arolla.idiap.ch>, tmb@arolla.idiap.ch (Thomas M. Breuel) writes:
|> In article <DBM.92Sep28220940@ai.allegra.att.com> dbm@allegra.att.com (Dave MacQueen) writes:
|> 
|>    Actually, I would prefer to move further away from Lisp style syntax.
|>    One of the unfortunate aspects of SML syntax is the overloading and
|>    consequent over-use of parentheses.  Parentheses play three main
|>    roles:
|> 
|>     (1) grouping (this is the most fundamental role)
|> 
|>     (2) bracketing tuples as in (1, true, "abc")
|> 
|>     (3) bracketing sequence expressions, as in (print "a"; print "b")
|> 
|> 
|> Well, I'm not so sure I agree. I think (3) should not matter, since
|> imperative programming is the exception, not the rule in SML (right?).

well, what about the example given, namely printing (and more generally
using input/output streams)?  this is even more true in concurrent ml,
in which communication between threads is done on channels.  

|> And I don't see much of a conflict between (1) and (2); in particular,
|> I like the fact that function calls with tupled arguments look
|> "normal" ("f(x,y,z)") right now.

i guess i might be missing the point here.  by (1), i thought this 
referred to expressions like f(g(h(k x))) having tons of parens, vs.
f g h k x, which has none.  i don't see how this relates to your
comments.

- thomas