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(* reorder ...) comments
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At 06:57 PM 8/16/97 -0400, Michael Richardson wrote:
> I need a *concrete* example of the reorder-* *-forms. The
>socks/pants/tie example didn't quite explain it to me.
OK.
BTW, Ron Rivest and I met at CRYPTO to go over the *-forms and we believe we
can toss most of them, so that might be one real simplification. In the
process, we scanned the set of objects and discovered that almost every
object we have already defined is positional so there's a possibility that
we don't need (* reorder ...). However, I need to ask the list.
Background on (* reorder ...): I believe it was a friend and co-worker of
mine who first suggested that we should have named parameters which can be
reordered at will, left out when optional, etc. This is one style of
constructing objects. In S-expression terms, it means that every parameter
in a tag would be an S-expression whose object name is the parameter name.
The other form of specifying parameters is the one we're used to in most
programming languages: positional. In this case, one might find an
S-expression whose object name represents a data type, but not one giving
the parameter name. The (* reorder ...) form indicates which of these
programming styles you want to follow. Namely, if you use the form, you
mean that you're following the named-parameter model (RFC822-like).
This is one example of a complexity of what Ron called the Leatherman
variety (or Swiss Army Knife, for those who don't know what a Leatherman
is). If we could resolve it on the list, and actually decide to permit only
positional or only named parameters, we can toss this *-form.
I would like to hear from the list on this subject.
- Carl
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