Bitten by the lambda parameter name

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

On 17/07/13 03:15, Zhong Yu wrote:
> "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.
This is _legal_ !!!

If s is a field then you can legally refer to s from the for-each 
expression, as the JLS says that the for-each variable is _not_ in scope 
there.

Where I'm getting at, is that every rule as its pros and its cons; when 
talking about scoping, I'd rather staying on the safe side and 
(physically, if required :-)) prevent people from writing stuff like:

m(ping, ping -> pong, pong)

Will this be too strict in other interesting cases? Of course - but I 
think the risk that we will end up with a mess of unreadable code is not 
to be undertaken.

Maurizio
>
> 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
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>