[erlang-questions] arity part of function name and variadic functions

[Robert Virding]

2009/2/25 Andras Georgy Bekes <bekesa@REDACTED>

> Robert Virding wrote:
> > Yes, that is exactly what happened, it was "inherited" from Prolog.
> > Along with a lot of things apart from the syntax.
> If Erlang inherited the syntax of prolog, you would not need to develop
> LFE!
>
> Off: The operator-notation and the functor-concept of Prolog has all the
> advantages of LISP's syntax (i.e. code=data), but makes the code look
> nice. IMHO a language with all the power of LISP, plus Prolog's
> operator syntax plus Erlang-style concurrency would be great alloy.


Unfortunately, we only finally only inherited bits of the prolog syntax
likes atoms, variables, lists, etc. The code == data bit finally disappeared
when users wanted better error information with line numbers. If I had
thought a bit more we possibly could have done what LFE does now, remembered
the line number of the start of the form, but separately not in the form
iteself, and used that for error info.

But the final syntax change went beyond using just operators like Prolog, so
now it is impossible.

Pity,

Robert
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