New EEP draft: Pinning operator ^ in patterns

[Nicolas Martyanoff]

On 2021-01-15 18:07, Loïc Hoguin wrote:
> I don't object to at least have this experimental as I've indicated before.
> Perhaps using this feature would confirm or remove concerns.

The problem with that kind of experiment is that it is significantly harder to
remove it once it is there. Saying no to features is hard in the open source 
ecosystem, and it is even harder if it is already implemented and distributed,
experimentally or not. This kind of process leads to a senseless accumulation
of features and a more complex language.

However I would second your earlier suggestion regarding implementing this 
kind of warning in code editors. I would also be perfectly fine with a 
compiler flag, disabled by default, which reports warnings for existing 
bindings used in patterns. This way, developers who do not like this mechanic
would be able to forbid it in their codebase, without affecting other 
developers. Thinking about it, I fail to see the point of modifying the 
language when a compiler flag would do the trick. -Wshadow in C compilers does
something similar, and I do not see anyone asking for an annotation to allow 
selective variable shadowing.

-- 
Nicolas Martyanoff
http://snowsyn.net
khaelin@REDACTED