RE: Syntactic sugar for function parameters

["Gavin Kistner" <gavin.kistner@...>]

From: Ivan-Assen Ivanov
> throughout our code we frequently use the following construct:
> 
> foobar( function() ..... end )
> 
> where the anonymous function body is often very small.

As a data point (and not a suggestion), Ruby's syntax for this is:
  foobar{ ... }

And if you want parameters:
  foobar{ |a,b| ... }

The terseness of these near-lambdas[1] is one of Ruby's greatest
accomplishments, IMO. That massive amount of typing reduction makes you
approach problems for a very different, non-iterator way.


[1] They're called "blocks" in Ruby. I call them near-lambdas because
they are closures, but they aren't really first-class functions with
that particular syntax, in the sense that you can't directly write:
  foo = { |a,b| ... }