"Yukihiro Matsumoto" <matz / ruby-lang.org> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1097483918.263733.13991.nullmailer / x31.priv.netlab.jp...
> Hi,
>
> In message "Re: ANN: Free-form-operators patch"
>     on Mon, 11 Oct 2004 00:19:01 +0900, Markus <markus / reality.com>
writes:
>
> |     Matz is a nice, reasonable, and very intelligent guy.  If (and the
> |jury is still out) I can make this work and suggested it for actuall
> |use, but do so in a way that is incompatible with the big picture, I'm
> |sure he'll point it out to me himself.
>
> I'm a nice and reasonable guy but not sure being intelligent.

Don't worry: the rest of your posing ascertained us that you are in fact.
:-)

> I haven't settled my opinion about this patch.  Surely this is a
> interesting change, but has some concerns.
>
> * I am against for user defined operator precedence.  It's just
>   wrong.  So forget about that idea.  All user defined operators
>   should have same precedence, even if they are allowed.

+2 (Also, since precedence is typically implemented in the parser I can
imagine that user defined precedence makes for awful changes in the parser
which has considerable complexity already AFAIK.)

> * I'm little bit afraid of the potential confusion (or obfuscation)
>   caused by this change, especially in combination with open classes.
>   I don't fully trust programmers.  They need freedom.  But too much
>   freedom might hinder usefulness of a language.

True.  I'm not sure whether I really miss user definable operators in
Ruby.  I think, rather not.

I didn't follow the whole thread, so this might have been discussed
already: what about a clean way of integrating other (sub) languages?  I
remember the topic as such has been discussed before, but I'm not sure
whether someone already related it to this thread.  If such a feature
existed, the need for user definable operators might disappear.

Kind regards

    robert