New EEP draft: Pinning operator ^ in patterns

[empro2@REDACTED]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 12:56:01 +0000
Karl Velicka <karolis.velicka@REDACTED> wrote:

> Dear list,

(recycled) (<- This is intended to be a light tone, perhaps a bit funny, and yet completely honest, not ironic, not sarcastic, ... I hope I do not need to explain the explanation ... I can add :-) though this quickly begins to look childish ...)

When something _I_ do is wrong or is perceived in any negative way, please tell _me_. Even more gladly than to simply clear up a misunderstanding, I will try to improve myself.

I am deeply ashamed to see where my messages ended up in the thread. The fault is most probably mine. I certainly did not intend to place them there, and this is not due to negligence:

I usually remove from: and to: in drafts to prevent accidental send instead of save, then look, write, {save, sleep, look, edit,}+ save, look, edit, delete. And "sometimes, only sometimes", instead of the delete, I open a new reply (to hopefully place my message properly), copy draft text, and send.

If this apology and explanation (all of it, not merely the thread tangling) was not urgent, I would already be researching cause and solution.


> There's been people describing the operator as "fly-droppings" and similar.
> Firstly, this comes across as an intentionally derogatory name, which makes

Sorry, intended as descriptive, pixelwise and like in "Some say COBOL has too few, some that Perl has too many fly-droppings", and to carry some light tone. Similar to the "ant-turds" someone might stumble across (IIRC they originated in Quebec)? if that is what "similar" alludes to?

I admit that it can be misunderstood. Only further down it reads "additional fly-droppings"; and it is not exactly shouting that the name is not aimed at the `^`.

After a lot of meticulous and solely well meaning work, this ended up in a different message:

    >"I am thinking of all those "curly bracket languages":
    > they all look "the same" but their fly-droppings have
    > confusingly equal, similar or different meanings."

With all my good intentions and this still in my mind context ... Now, I fear that this might be read as 'ALGOL-hater' ... :,(

...

But you have read this?! down below you mention the "walrus". I have just checked it, it is only in that message. Then you must assume that I am the foe of all non-letter terminators, separators, operators, delimiters, and annotations?


> me think that responders using such language are not looking to discuss in
> good faith from the get-go. Secondly, what exactly makes ^Pattern "fly

On the contrary! What language? Using quotations to express what I mean, for a lighter tone? I merely compiled arguments available to me and gave them names for easier discussion. I tried to keep it short, split off some, but decided against scattering it.


> droppings" but `foo(<<H:8, _:H>> = X) -> X.` is presumably perfectly
> readable? I think this is largely (if not entirely) down to familiarity.
> Let's not conflate those two things, and let's not pretend like adding
> another glyph to our arsenal is somehow going to make everyone's brain
> explode. I like language cleanliness as much as the next person, but there

It is simply that 'adding another glyph' argues against itself. It is not the only, and no decisive argument, but one that deserves sufficent attention in estimating its weight by looking at all things connected like the next one.


> is no need whatsoever to reach for strawmans about 5-char-wide walruses
> that are obviously coming to eat us all.

Yes, it is a bit colourful, like "obviously coming to eat us all". And merely tries to warn about a possible overemphasis of the assignment aspect of matching and possible consequences -- in a light tone, and less abstractly than this phrasing.


> Next up, a lot of people are arguing about the syntax more than the feature

Only my suggestion of `~` instead of `^`, and a remark about a possible iteration of 'adding another glyph' because it is mereley the addition of one more glyph. The previous one is to remind of a possible effect on mindset, and possible consequences of that.


> operator mandatory etc but none of that is in the proposal and I really
> think it should be. I think it may be easier to sell the community on the

There are more things not mentioned, let alone dealt with, in it.


I have spent a large part of the day trying to prevent an explanation of this explanation (and to keep this one short! Fail! again!), but please:

    >"When I'm mistunderstood
    > Try as hard as you can
    > I tried as hard as I could
    > To make you see"

	~Michael

--

What was said, is not what was spoken,
but what was understood; and none of these
comes necessarily close to what was meant.