Wolfgang Lux wrote:
> I understand the motivation for this proposal, but I feel somewhat
> uneasy about the fact that Curry will now have two different kinds of
> patterns: Patterns in function heads which may be non-linear and
> patterns in case expressions which must be linear (btw, what about
> patterns on the left hand side of local declarations, let (x,x) = e
> in ...?).
I also thought about it but I prefer to make smaller extensions.
In principle, one could also allow non-linear patterns
in local declarations by translating "let (x,x) = e in e'"
into "let (x,y) = e in x=:=y &> e'" and similarly for case
expression where one can put "x==y" into the guards.
On the other hand, I think that functional patterns
(see
http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~mh/papers/LOPSTR05.html )
are a quite useful language extension. If one adds this
to Curry (as done in PAKCS), it makes sense to allow
different kinds of patterns in function declarations
and case/let expressions. Therefore, I have no problem
to make this distinction.
> I also have a third proposal: Flexible case (aka fcase) expressions.
>
> One of the advantages of an integrated functional logic language
> compared to logic languages is that we have nested expressions and can
> avoid new auxiliary declarations for functions that are used in just
> one place. However, this is currently not possible for flexible
> pattern matching. Hence, I suggest adding a new kind of expression
> fcase <Expression> of { <Alternative1>; ...; <AlternativeN> } (n
> >= 1)
> The semantics of fcase expressions is given by a simple translation
> fcase e of { t1 | gd11 -> e11; ...; tn | gdn -> en }
> ~~>
> let f t1 | gd1 = e1; ...; f tn | gdn = en in f e
> i.e., no fall through behavior as in (rigid) case expressions.
> Obviously, by this translation an fcase expression can evaluate to
> multiple results, e.g., fcase _ of { _ -> False; _ -> True } would be
> just a slightly complex way to write the expression False ? True. I
> guess, its needless to say that MCC implements fcase expressions
> already.
I think this is interesting and I am in favor of it.
This has also the advantage that intermediate languages
like FlatCurry (which is based on an fcase/case distinction)
do not introduce syntactic constructs that are not present
in the source language.
Best regards,
Michael
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Received on Do Jan 06 2011 - 09:49:01 CET