Re: weird macro params issue

On 2008.05.22., at 15:10, Tim Diggins wrote:

> I hope you're not arguing that character count is more important than
> understandability / readability / learnability.

I'm not. As a matter of fact, to this day I prefer the old existence  
built-ins "?default" and "?exists" for similar reasons I prefer Java  
"extends" to C# ":" :-)
I don't feel that <#macro m a b=a> impacts understandability or  
readability. To me,

<#macro a b!>
   <#if !b??>
     <#local b=a/>
   </#if>
</#macro>

would, honestly, be less understandable IMHO. The b=a doesn't  
introduce any new syntax - it's your good ol' defaulted argument, the  
only novelty is it's defaulting to value of another argument, which is  
also visually located near it, so I don't believe it makes  
understanding the meaning too daunting.

Attila.

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