Feature: terse array literals

[Sod-Almighty]

Commas are a pain in the arse when using array literals. It's extra typing, for one. More importantly, it causes syntax errors when adding or removing lines in a multi-line literal.

I suggest that commas be optional in array literals, provided only literals are used:

a = [1 2 3]        ; only numeric literals, acceptable
b = [:a :b :c]    ; only symbolic literals, acceptable
c = ["a" ?b 'c']   ; only character literals, acceptable
BLAH = 10
d = [1 ?b false nil BLAH]    ; only literals and constants, acceptable

def fn; end
e = [fn 1]   ; function call without parentheses, commas are mandatory in this declaration

Being a dynamic language, detecting function calls might be tricky. You could check if a function by that name exists in scope and throw an error, but that might be a performance hog. The simpler option is to simply allow only literals (numbers, characters, strings), true, false and constants (that is, identifiers starting with a capital letter).

There is prior art for this, e.g. in lisp.

[ozra]

The opinion on this will be fully reflected by my first comment in #66 (or the last).

Of course, it's a static language, not dynamic, so it could actually be done technically; the critical reason is simply the strong reduction in clarity. If you prefer balancing a thousand parentheses to skip commas, well, then there's Lisp ;-). I see you've gotten a bit infected by it, admit it was near you typed defun fn! X-D

Just because it can be done doesn't mean it's a good choice. That fact is what brings me to propose a possible killing of one of one of my darlings to enable #97 (will post there). Some minor consistent redundancy in language is important to ensure syntax errors can be pinpointed well.

Regarding multi-line arrays: newline counts as separator whether you put a comma there or not (COMMA + NEWLINE and NEWLINE are both considered one separator) so .