Syntax decision

[Paul Benedict]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com>wrote:

> Yes, there are lots of possible hacks like this, including:
>  - forcing unary inferred-type lambdas to not use parens:
>    x -> e    instead of allowing  (x) -> e
>  - Not allow casting of nilary lambdas without specifying ()
>    (T)() -> e   instead of allowing  (T) -> e
>
> But all of these introduce irregularities into the syntax, for the sake
> of supporting an extra case because people find
>
>  () -> e
>
> to be ugly.  This increases the complexity of the syntax and means there
> are more special cases to learn.
>
> With the current approach, there is only one special case:
>  - All lambdas consist of paren-args-paren-arrow-body
>  - For the special case of unary, type-inferred lambdas, you can omit
> the parens:  x -> x+1
>
> Turning that into "you *must* omit the parens" means that all users,
> even those who don't care about the nilary form, must learn another rule.
>
> Better suggestions?
>
>
If a lambda needs no arguments and if () looks ugly (nods), is this anymore
palatable?

(void) -> e