Bitten by the lambda parameter name

[Zhong Yu]

"for(s : s)" doesn't make sense if read out loud in English; nobody
wants to write a line like that, so I'm confused why it drives
Maurizio crazy that it's illegal.

If it is meant to ridicule the feature request by presenting an
example that goes horribly wrong, it is not a fair/realistic example
to prove the point. It's like arguing Java's rules of names are too
lax because people might write incomprehensible code like

class _
{
    _ _;

    _ _(){ return _; }
}



Zhong Yu


On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Jonathan Gibbons
<jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com> wrote:
> On 07/16/2013 04:59 PM, Zhong Yu wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 6:48 PM, maurizio cimadamore
>> <maurizio.cimadamore at oracle.com> wrote:
>>> On 17-Jul-13 12:37 AM, Zhong Yu wrote:
>>>> I don't think people have problems to keep track of scope stacks and
>>>> associate a name with its closest definition. Do we have testimonies
>>>> of confusions from other languages that allow reusing local names in
>>>> lambda parameters?
>>> Speaking about Java, there is a scoping rule that drives me crazy, and it's
>>> the one for the for-each loop; it should be legal to say:
>>>
>>> Collection<String> s = ...
>>> for (String s : s) {
>> I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not, but `for(s : s)` does
>> not make any sense to me... something that contains itself?
>
> In "for (String s: s)" the presumption would be that the second s
> would refer to the collection defined on the previous line, and not
> the foreach variable itself, since (as you point out) that would not
> make any sense.
>
>
>>
>> But here's an example that I think does make sense and shoulda compiled
>>
>>          String string = ...;
>>          ...
>>          List<String> strings = ...;
>>          for(String string : strings)  // reuse "string"
>>              ...
>>
>>> ...
>>> }
>>>
>>> This example features the same kind of disambiguation pattern that I've seen
>>> applied in most examples here - stuff on the left of the ':' (or '->') has
>>> one meaning, stuff on the right has another meaning.
>>>
>>> The only example I would be more comfortable with, is the last one you sent,
>>> where you use the same parameter name in two different nesting levels. This
>>> is slightly different from what we have discussed so far.
>>>
>>> Maurizio
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 6:25 PM, maurizio cimadamore
>>>> <maurizio.cimadamore at oracle.com> wrote:
>>>>> On 16-Jul-13 11:59 PM, Remi Forax wrote:
>>>>>> On 07/17/2013 12:40 AM, maurizio cimadamore wrote:
>>>>>>> On 16-Jul-13 11:17 PM, Dan Smith wrote:
>>>>>>>>>     StringBuilder builder = createText(StringBuilder.class, builder
>>>>>>>> -> builder.append("name"));
>>>>>>> What is this meant to replace exactly? It's a shorthand for:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
>>>>>>> builder.append("name");
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Maurizio
>>>>>> Again, I'm not sure why this is interesting to know exactly what the
>>>>>> code does,
>>>>>> Anyway, the code of createText allows you to create a mutable object
>>>>>> by reflection, to initialize it and when you get the result,
>>>>>> you have the guarantee that you can never see the object half
>>>>>> initialized.
>>>>> I'm asking about the code, because I think that if we are forcing people
>>>>> to write code like that there might be a problem other than the scope
>>>>> issue.
>>>>> Having two variables so close with the same name is confusing - no
>>>>> matter how the language will pan out in the end. YOu seem to imply that
>>>>> using the same name is justified by the fact that the two objects are
>>>>> really the same - but I'm less sure that many people will be able to
>>>>> read your code and immediately grasp as to why the two variables are
>>>>> named in the same way. I think a good API should minimize occurrences of
>>>>> that for the users sake.
>>>>>
>>>>> Maurizio
>>>>>> Rémi
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>