Adding print-style function calls, and preproc plugins

[Alex Martelli]

"Gerson Kurz" <gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote in message
news:3b8dc97b.60293093 at news.isar.de...
    ...
> There might be a slight ambiguity when function names are used without
> arguments, because it then could be interpreted as either the function
> object or the function call; but then again, I see writing the
> function name as object without assigning it to some variable or some
> such as rather pointless.

And of course there's no problem interpreting whether:

    blobber plikke

means:

    blobber(plikke)

or:

    blobber(plikke())

is there?  I mean, it just takes some mindreading on the
part of the compiler, interpreter AND human reader, that's
all -- they'll just have to know or guess whether plikke
names a function (or other callable object) and in that
case whether it's "pointless" or "indispensable" for the
plikke object itself to be passed in as the argument to
blobber -- as opposed to its being called and the RESULT
of the call passed as blobber's argument.  Piece of cake.


> IIRC VB (yuk!) can do something similar. But then, VB is possibly the
> *worst* kind of advocacy possible.

I think it's exactly the right kind of advocacy for this
proposal -- side by side with Perl, which also does its
context-dependent black magic to guess what you can
possibly mean when you omit the parentheses and such,
and gets it right some part of the time.

I'd MUCH rather use a language that does *NOT* try to
guess what I mean (and gets it right part of the time),
but just lets me express my meaning explicitly, simply
and precisely, thank you very much.  E.g., Python is
quite good at just letting me say what I mean!-)


Alex