[erlang-questions] some language changes

[Joe Armstrong]

Now the book is done I've been thinking about some language changes.

Here's my list (no particular priority)

1. What you type in the shell and what you type in a module/escript
should be the same

2. Hashmaps (aka associative arrays)

3. Extended string syntax: idea - put an atom *before the string quote
    to say what the string means and to *change* the syntax rules that apply
    to the string content.

     X = C "......"
          C = a control atom

       X = regexp " ... "

          = html " .... "

         Then we could write regexps and LaTeX inside strings without
         all the horrible additional quotes

4. Simple string substitutions

     X = subst "aaa ${P} bbb ${Q} ccc"

      *means*    X = [<"aaa">, P, <"bbb">, Q, ...]

     This would be very useful.

None of these are large changes - but they would make Erlang a nicer language
to program in. The (regexp "....") would be extremely useful to the compiler
and allow generating efficient regexp matching code :-)

Comments?

/Joe