[2046] in java-interest
re: extending String functionality
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Smiljan Grmek - KSI ZGB)
Fri Sep 22 11:35:05 1995
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 13:50:59 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Smiljan Grmek - KSI ZGB <sgrmek@public.srce.hr>
To: Andrew Gilmartin <ajg@cadre.com>
cc: java-interest@java.sun.com
In-Reply-To: <9509191911.AA01488@cadre.com>
On Tue, 19 Sep 1995, Andrew Gilmartin wrote:
> > a.set_value( a.get_value() + 1 );
> >What I wished to be allowed to write :
> > a = a + 1;
> >or
> > a += 1;
>
> I would write
>
> a.increment()
> ....
This brings us back to the operator overloading in Java, already almost
hacked to death. I would still like to give some reasonable food for
thought in this regard.
It is really psychologically true that people find it much easier to read
binary infix operators than functional (method invocation) notation.
Although it is a bit late in the game, the Java team might consider a
syntactical embellishment:
"(" ref1 method ref2 ")" to be equivalent to
method(ref1,ref2) if an adequate method exists.
This will make infix operatore truly more readable, the parentheses would
obviate any need for operator priority specification, and the operators
would still have identifier names. So you would write:
(Amatrix matmult (Bmatrix matadd Cmatrix))
Ternary and higher order operators are written in prefix functional
notation anyway in almost all languages (with notable exception of
Smalltalk).
Regards Smi
Smiljan Grmek
KSI Zagreb
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