[E-Lang] get, set, and dot

[Mark S. Miller]

At 02:16 AM Monday 2/26/01, Tyler Close wrote:
>MarcS wrote:
>> Another thing the ertpMintMaker reminded me of is that I
>> seriously dislike the dot notation
>
>I'll agree with pretty much any proposed reduction of the E grammar.
>See:
>
>http://www.eros-os.org/pipermail/e-lang/2001-January/004128.html

At this previous message you wrote:

>I think it would be a good idea to take as many of these shorthands as
>possible and stick them in your pocket until well after 1.0. 

I think I like the pocket idea.  I will remove dot from the official E 
grammar as of the next release, but leave dot in the grammar source (the 
yacc input file, "e.y") as reserved for now, along with several other 
constructs I've reserved.  This ensures that other grammar changes don't 
preclude turning these (back) on.

In the interests of not breaking existing code all at once, and in the 
interests of experimentation, I will also provide switches for turning some 
reserved features on.  However, the official E grammar as of any release 
will only consist of those constructs accepted when all these switches are off.

Now that Microsoft is heavily pedaling C# to Visual Basic programmers, I'm 
simply going to remove support for the VB-style block structure (If ... End 
If) without even reserving it.  With this move by Microsoft, curlies have 
simply won.  (Thanks to MarcS for this point.)  To date, not a single person 
attracted to E has used or liked the VB-style syntax anyway.

As to the single-method object definition, I'm inclined to keep it, as I'll 
explain in further email.

Everyone, please keep up the pressure to simplify.  Even when I say no, it's 
great to more often be asked to take things out than to put things in.  Thanks.


        Cheers,
        --MarkM