in my standard prelude I use ==> as as an expression thunkafier macro.<div> <div class="gmail_quote">2011/8/29 Greg Hendershott <<a href="mailto:greghendershott@gmail.com">greghendershott@gmail.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">> it wouldn't be necessary to create all these duplicate forms to avoid > writing (lambda () ...) This would cut down on code, and also make the > language more consistent. </div>I think Noel has it exactly right. The common concept is "thunk". The desire is, how to say it more succinctly. Surely there should be one way to say it more succinctly, which works with many forms? As opposed to many forms each needing its variation to say the one thing more succinctly? So: How to say it more succinctly than (lambda () e)? Or even the i-can-haz-unicode way, (ë () e)? (thunk e) is a first approximation. But, "thunk" is jargon, and it's barely more succinct than (lambda () e). So, how about any of these as the super succinct way: (() e) (\ e) (ë e) ?? Actually I'm fine with (lambda () e) or (ë () e). I don't think a couple extra parens are horrible, or I'd be writing C# or cortex-fudge. And I don't think it's horrible for functions to be first-class, and to express "here's some stuff to do" as "here's a function". 2011/8/29 Noel Welsh <<a href="mailto:noelwelsh@gmail.com">noelwelsh@gmail.com</a>>: <div><div></div><div class="h5">> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 8:05 PM, Eli Barzilay <<a href="mailto:eli@barzilay.org">eli@barzilay.org</a>> wrote: >> There's also the semi-popular syntax extension change, like {E ...} >> expanding to (ë () E ...), but that looks very confusing with >> something like (thread {(printf "foo\n")}) -- so maybe do that with >> the outer form: {thread (printf "foo\n")}. Or maybe do that with a >> macro instead: (e thread (printf "foo\n")), which will probably go the >> way of `nested'. > > Yeah, what about solving the problem of lambda's verbosity directly? > If fn or \ was shorthand for lambda, or > > { a1 ... | expr ... } > > expanded to > > (lambda (a1 ...) expr ...) > > it wouldn't be necessary to create all these duplicate forms to avoid > writing (lambda () ...) This would cut down on code, and also make the > language more consistent. > > N. > > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > <a href="http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users" target="_blank">http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users</a> _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: <a href="http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users" target="_blank">http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users</a></div></div></blockquote></div> </div>