[erlang-questions] some language changes

[beepblip@REDACTED]

good stuff


On 5/21/07, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>
> 2. Hashmaps (aka associative arrays)


Yes! This would be a great addition.


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



How about this as well. Allow us to declare a list as a string with some
metadata
on the listobject. I don't mind the linked-list structure. I just want an
easy
way for an RPC system to know the difference when communicating with
some other language or data representation (aka JSON, Ruby, Python, ...).
All the implementations
that try to distinguish between a string and a list have clumsy techniques.

Something using a literal like:

S = "some string here"

Would set that bit.. and

Ah, but these are just cells. How could that be done? Mark all the cells.
Have new
constructors for binary to string conversion. Of course we would need that
is_string() function as well.


BTW, thanks for opening this up for discussion.

cheers!
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