Re: math expressions (was: Re: Tail call elimination)

[Pete Dietl]

> I understand what Tim is saying but I still prefer to have a single
> function.  I want to reduce the "namespace leakage" for these
> capabilities.  If we decide to add more operations to this in the
> future I don't want it colliding with something else we want to do.
>
> However, sometimes it's hard to see exactly how something will look
> until we actually see it.

Hm so does that imply that we're still on the fence?
What can we do to resolve this? Take a poll?
You're the benevolent dictator right Paul? :)

> > I propose the following (a variation of example 2):
> >
> > $(math + 5 (/ (* (/ (* 2 9) (+ 7 5 4)) (* 1024 1024)) 19))
>
> If we want to support grouping directly we're still requiring the
> function to be recursive.  If we use make expansion to provide grouping
> the function doesn't need to be recursive (of course, we get recursion
> implicitly because of make's expansion).

By recursive do you mean the implementation of
$(math) in the make source is recursive?
I only prefer my suggestion because it removes a lot
of dollar signs and `insert name of function here` repetition.

It you need more convincing, one could argue that parsing it directly
would likely lead to a more efficient implementation -- we would
have the opportunity to implement this as an iterative process; either
by loops or tail-call recursion. But I'll reiterate that my motivation is
a more concise syntax.