Re: weird macro params issue

Thursday, May 22, 2008, 3:10:27 PM, Tim Diggins wrote:

> On 22 May 2008, at 13:51, Attila Szegedi wrote:
>
>>> <#macro foo bar baz!>
>>>   <#if !baz??>
>>>       <#local baz = bar />
>>>   </#if>
>>> </#macro>
>>>
>>> If this was possible, I'd vote for not supporting the "weird  
>>> defaults"
>>> at all.
>>
>> "Weird defaults" - I like the name :-) Well, consider how the "weird
>> defaults" would cut down the character count in your above example
>> considerably; that's basically how I think of them - a syntactic
>> replacement for a bunch <#if> statements.
>
>
>
> I hope you're not arguing that character count is more important than
> understandability / readability / learnability.

I would think that if someone understands this:

  <#macro foo x y=1>

Then he also automatically understands this:

  <#macro foo x y=x>

Of course if you are "overly educated" then you will start wondering
about evaluation orders and such, but most people will just blindly
conclude that y defaults to the value of x, and that's it.
  
> I would guess that many FTL users are using FTL as one of many  
> languages and 'return' to FTL after varying sized gaps. That returning
> needs to be pleasant, or FTL won't survive.

(And I'm afraid it too often won't... but that's unrelated.)

> but I'm not arguing that strongly against this feature, if the logic  
> can be made clear and understandable. (Maybe it's just that I 'return'
> to FTL from python (and Java), that I have such a problem with this one)
>
> -- Tim

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel Dekany


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