[erlang-questions] Maps branch and disclaimers

[Chris King]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2013 11:48:33 -0400, Robert Virding  
<robert.virding@REDACTED> wrote:

> I need this ability to step through a map/dict/whatever in an  
> application I am working on (luerl). Dict does not provide this type of  
> functionality. It would be easy to hack into an orddict but I don't want  
> to use lists. Gb_trees provides an iterators but they are quite limited  
> in that they only allow you to step through the whole tree from  
> beginning to end; you can't jump in in the middle. Which I need to be  
> able to do.

That answers why you need iteration through a homogeneous map-like data  
structure.  I get that.

But why does that need to be joined with syntax support?

(My thesis is that syntax support and iteration apply to two distinct use  
cases of key-value maps, and that they should be kept separate rather than  
piggybacking on each other, in order to permit better optimization, to  
decouple development, and to simplify typechecking.)