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3 points by parenthesis 5879 days ago | link | parent

The . ! syntax is great.

A possible problem is that I can see myself wanting to use this syntax a lot for accessing hash tables with symbols as keys. But ! is a lot more annoying to type than . is.

My alternative suggestion (which I'm sure has worse problems of its own) would be

  x.y  ->  (x 'y) if y is a symbol, (x y) otherwise

  x,y  ->  (x y)   (by analogy with , inside backquote)

  x!y  ->  (x 'y)  (if there should ever be a need to quote a non-symbol?)
Edit: Also in favour of my proposal, ! looks too much like a letter l:

  a!ex
Whereas

  a.ex
is very clear.


3 points by EliAndrewC 5879 days ago | link

. and , are not very visually distinctive. It'd be like having (x 0) and (x O) both be commonly used.

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