On Jan 5, 2007, at 1:55 PM, gwtmp01 / mac.com wrote:
> I wonder if 1 & 2 might be better addressed via syntax.  Something  
> like:
>
> 	recv.m		   # standard dispatch with literal method name
> 	recv <- :m	   # standard dispatch with dynamic method name

Another thought on the syntax:

	recv.m a1
	recv._ :m, a1	# dispatch to named method
	recv.! :m, a1	# dispatch to named method (include private methods)

The mnemonic is that the underscore represents a blank method name  
and the
blank is filled in by the first argument.  Just think of the sequence  
"._"
and ".!" as syntax and not as the standard dot with methods "_" and "!".

Of course this means that "_" and "!" would not be valid method names  
(well,
"!" is already invalid

Gary Wright

P.S. Does anyone else think that language design is unnecessarily  
constrained
by insisting on ASCII/Latin-1 characters?  It sure would be nice to  
assume that
source code was in Unicode and thus gain access to some more interesting
characters to use for language semantics.

P.P.S.  Yes, I know about APL.

Gary Wright