<jscode> - should it be free or sanitized?

Hi!

I don't really care :) 

The reason is simply that Amber should be able to play well with the JavaScript ecosystem, and that means being able to embed JS code. That's what Amber already do. 

Now using it as some kind of template is of course a bad idea, but it's not how it's indented to be used.

What I like with your proposal is that it would allow pragmas in Amber. But I hate the triple ;;; syntax.

Cheers,

Nico

On May 3, 2012, at 3:43 PM, Herby Vojčík wrote:

H. Hirzel wrote:

Hello Herby

Great to see you working on a compiler alternative!

On 5/2/12, Herby Vojčík<[hidden email]>  wrote:

Hello,

I'd like to ask for the policy on use of<inlineJs()>  - for now, it is

included as-is. My question is - should this be left as-is, by which

people can create templates of sort (dislike this, too much cons, pros

are questionable):

Could you please elaborate a bit on this? what are the cons?

As you mentioned, maintainability. Also see last issue (189) in github - people will try to push it to the limits which may create very unhappy situations to solve. Compiler architecture may be constrained by this.
I would like to allow inline JS only as a standalone statement at JS level, and properly isolate it.
At the present, every other node in classical compiler is production of value, except inline-js; and evey node in ImpCompiler is assignment of value, except inline js. It is not precisely defined in what contexts in can appear, and I think it should be defined.
The main goal of including inline JS was to use it as <primitive: 1> is used in classical Smalltalk, wasn't it? So it looks like it should be the standalone statement, anyway (either returning the right value directly, or letting the smalltalk code take on; of course it could appear anywhere, so it's more free than that)

<for (var i=1; i<100; ++i) {>

"smalltalk code"

<}>

Looks a bit weird at the start but would be a good bridge for

JavaScript programmers to move to Smalltalk. Or to put Smalltalk into

an existing JavaScript project. However as you write this might be

questionable in terms of maintainability.

or it should be flyweightly sanitized by putting semicolon(s) in front

and in back of them (I like this alternative; I do it in ImpCompiler)?

Sounds good, could you give an example?

Well, in fact, to be really foolproof, it should be three semicolons at the end.
So, if one writes

foo
|x|
x:=3.
<x+=1>
^x

its fine, since it produces
var x=nil;
x=3;
;x+=1;;;
return x;

but it fails when

bar
|x|
<for(>
x:=1.
x<10.
<x++){console.log(x);}>

since it isolates the pieces and produces

var x=nil;
;for(;;;
x=1;
(/*class check*/?x<10:send(x,'__lt',10));
;x++){console.log(x):};;;

which is clearly syntax error.

Herby

--

Nicolas Petton
http://www.nicolas-petton.fr