Re Torbjörn Re: Features wanted (0$ reward)

[Björn Hägglund]

>   meth m(Z Y)
>      fun {F X} X*@a end
>   in
>      Y = {F {@f Z}}
>   end

Yes, this is good if you want an auxiliary function used by only that 
method. But what if you want an auxiliary function that is shared by 3 
methods out of, say, 50 methods. Then it would be nice to be able write 
things like this inside a class definition:

local
   fun {Aux X}
      <some expression perhaps involving attributes>
   end
in
   meth m1(...)
      <statement calling Aux>
   end
   meth m2(...)
      <statement calling Aux>
   end
   meth m3(...)
      <statement calling Aux>
   end
end

Writing it like this also makes it clear that Aux does not have direct 
access to the method parameters.



> class A
>   attr
>      f: fun {$ X} X*X end
> end

Using this style just to express that a function is local to a class is not 
elegant enough for the following two reasons: You need to use an attribute 
access to call the function and the syntax for that deviate too much from 
ordinary function calls. And what's more, a cell is implicitly created, 
which gives the impression that the function might be destructively changed.

These issues are certainly not deadly important. But why not make things 
perfect...



.Björn