The prefix symbol

[John Nilsson]

Actually. On a Swedish keyboard this is harder still to type. It is the same
key sequence that would produce } on a US layout. BUT it is not standalone
so it won't show until you combine it with another letter or a space.

Examples

Shift+^ and then a = â

Shift+^ and then space = ^

You can't do Shift+^ and then ( either, not on Ubuntu at least, because that
results in super script. ⁽


BR,

John
Den 20 jun 2011 22:26 skrev "Yuval Shavit" <yshavit at akiban.com>:
> Not a huge deal, but for those of us with not-very-big hands, # is easier
to
> type than ^.
>
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Pavel Minaev <int19h at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I would prefer to see "^" instead:
>>
>> ^x -> x + 1
>>
>> ^(x) { return x + 1; }
>>
>> ^{ x -> x + 1 }
>>
>> The main reason is actually purely subjective preference for the look: I
>> feel that it is less visually noisy than "#", where the latter gives
undue
>> weight to the start marker of the lambda, and not to the important parts
of
>> it (i.e. argument list and body). At the same time, "^" sits rather above
>> the baseline of the text, making it easy to distinguish when you are
>> actually scanning for the beginning of the lambda.
>>
>> The secondary reason is that "^" remotely resembles the lambda character,
>> so
>> it is somewhat mnemonic.
>>
>> To the best of my knowledge, there are no parse problems here - while "^"
>> is
>> an existing binary operator, there are no contexts in which it could be
>> confused for the above syntax.
>>
>> A potential disadvantage is that "^" already means xor, and is being
reused
>> here for a completely unrelated thing. But I think that xor is very
>> infrequent in typical Java code, and so there is little potential for
>> confusion here.
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Stephen Colebourne
>> <scolebourne at joda.org>wrote:
>>
>> > The four syntax families split into two types, those with a prefix
>> > symbol and those without.
>> >
>> > The prefix symbol is commonly mentioned as #:
>> >
>> > #(x) { return x + 1; }
>> > #{x -> x + 1}
>> >
>> >
>> > *** If you have a strong desire to see any symbol other than #
>> > considered then please respond to this thread. ***
>> >
>> > - Your reply MUST specify the symbol
>> > - Your reply MUST give a brief justification
>> > - Your reply MUST repeat the two examples above using your preferred
>> symbol
>> > - You SHOULD try to ensure that your alternate symbol choice would
>> > parse acceptably
>> > - You MAY reply to suggest a keyword, however you should expect that
>> > to be rejected
>> >
>> > Thread rules:
>> > - Only reply if you prefer your alternate symbol to #
>> > - To discuss something, change the thread title
>> > - Don't reply just to say "I don't want a prefix symbol"
>> > - Responding with a symbol suggestion doesn't preclude your first
>> > choice actually being "no prefix symbol"
>> >
>> > For example, my preferred choice of prefix symbol is #, thus I should
>> > not respond to this thread!
>> >
>> > Stephen
>> > (this is an experiment to see if we can focus on one particular
>> > discussion element at a time)
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>