Optional brackets around lambda expression

[Ben Evans]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Reinier Zwitserloot <
reinier at zwitserloot.com> wrote:

> Er, right. This redmond variant syntax of Ali Ebrahimi:
>
>
> a, b, c -> expression
>
> cannot work, as far as I can tell, in the current parser architecture of
> javac and ecj, and attempting to work around it or fix the parser is a
> massive undertaking. I think - experts, please chime in!
>
> This:
>
> process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d);
>
> is hard to differentiate from this:
>
> process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d -> 5);
>
>
It has other (human) issues as well.

Consider process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d - 5); or process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d >
5);

Both are regular calls taking a bunch of parameters, and to my eyes at
least, it scarcely leaps off the page that:

process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d -> 5);

is making use of delayed execution via a lambda expression, and:

process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d - 5);
process(x, y, z, a, b, c, d > 5);

are both "regular" method calls. It isn't even that difficult to construct
sane examples where different overloads of the same method would take
"regular" parameters or lambdas.

Thanks,

Ben