My understanding is that ssyntax can only be part of symbols, so you wouldn't be able to write :(a b c). At any rate, I think the idea of using it is to ape keyword parameters in Common Lisp.
Personally, I like & and | or andf and orf, but as almkgor mentioned, | is taken for "odd" symbols (e.g. '|this is a symbol|), using just / would interfere with things like w/stdout, and using & and // would be asymmetric. In any case, having some ssyntax for andf and orf is definitely a good idea.
Taking inspiration from discreet math, we could use ∧ and ∨ as andf and orf, respectively. This would be in line with pg's current use of ~ as not. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn't make use of non-ascii characters... (or else you get APL et al)
I would say use ^ and v, but something tells me that disallowing a v in identifiers would be a bad idea (e.g.eval) ;)
My biggest problem with using Unicode is that it's often a pain to type. The Mac gets this the most right of any platform I know, but even so, it's (a) not a standard, and (b) mostly alphabetic. Which is a pity, really, since those do make the most sense.
> My biggest problem with using Unicode is that it's often a pain to type.
Agreed. We might be able to add a hook to arc-mode in emacs to make it more convenient, but reminds me even more of APL (which if I recall correctly required a custom keyboard to type).
> + might not be bad, but it's probably a little too common
I like +. While + does get used in symbols occasionally (most notably in arithmetic), I can't think of any cases where it gets used in the middle of a symbol.
EDIT: On second thought, when I use plus outside of a programming context, I usually mean and, so it might be confusing to use + as 'andf.
The problem with "adding a hook to arc-mode in emacs" is that then you alienate everyone not using Emacs. And that's a good point about + being used to mean &.
"maybe we shouldn't make use of non-ascii characters" : why not ? Characters like λ have their place in a Lisp, and I think ∧and ∨ have their place too. Anyway, such characters wouldn't be used very frequently (do you often use andf & orf ?) and could be ignored if typing them is too painful. That's better than consuming ASCII characters that sometimes fit well in symbol names, IMO.
I think it would be hilariously ironic to make non-ASCII Unicode characters part of Arc's syntax and functions.
A few proposals for giving functions new names: ☢ for atomic, ✄ for cut, ✔ for check, ⌚ for time, ⌛ for sleep, ☠ for kill-thread, ☇ for zap, ♭for flat.
But anyway, I still think they're not worth loosing an ASCII character, and using mathematical notation would be very useful. It would make code readable by people a little aware of mathematics. That is, most programers. It would be definitely better than arbitrary characters.
Why should we restrict to ASCII anyway ? I mean, a lot of symbols I use are not ASCII anymore (they are accentuated, I'm French so something like 'year is translated into 'année, not into 'annee). Sure, they're hard to type, but are they any longer than they symbol counterpart ? If you type them often, just make them a vi macro (or whatever in your favorite text editor) and you're done.
It might end up looking like APL, for sure, but I think Fortress, Sun's new language designed by Guy Steele, is going that way too. And Steele cannot be wrong :)
I don't mind non-ASCII, I mind weird non-ASCII. Even in English, we leave ASCII behind: “As I was going to the café—what fun—my naïve friend said…” It's just that I don't know of any keyboard layout that supports ∧ or ∨. I agree that they would look great, as would Fortress.
I wonder if anyone's given any though to using (La)TeX in a language? So that something like (number{\wedge}acons var) would be the same as (number∨acons var)? Or just as a nice way of typing things like Fortress? (Which I agree looks very interesting.)
I'd probably use them a lot more often if the syntax was a little easier, which is why I suggested using ssyntax for them. Currently the syntax is ((orf this that the-other) foo), and doubled starting parens feel rather strange to me.
