I don’t understand how not using a keyword to define a function causes the meaning to change depending on imports. I’ve never run into an issue like that before. Can you give an example?
The basic problem is that identifiers can be either types or variables, and without a keyword letting you know what kind of statement you’re dealing with, there’s no way of knowing without a complete identifier table. For example, what does this mean:
foo * bar;
If foo is a type, that is a pointer declaration. But if it’s a variable, that’s a multiplication expression. Here’s another simple one:
foo(bar);
Depending on how foo is defined, that could be a function call or a declaration of a variable bar of type foo, with some meaningless parentheses thrown in.
When you mix things together it gets even more crazy. Check this example from this article:
foo(*bar)();
Is bar a pointer to a function returning foo, or is foo a function that takes a bar and returns a function pointer?
let and fn keywords solve a lot of these ambiguity problems because they let the parser know what kind of statement it’s looking at, so it can know whether identifiers in certain positions refer to types or variables. That makes parsing easier to write and helps give nicer error messages.
I don’t understand how not using a keyword to define a function causes the meaning to change depending on imports. I’ve never run into an issue like that before. Can you give an example?
Some declarations terminate on the name, other declarations go one requiring more tokens. In C, the only thing that differentiates them is the type.
Parenthesis in particular are completely ambiguous. But asterisks and square brackets also create problems.
I have never heard of this problem for C. Can you elaborate or point to some articles?
The basic problem is that identifiers can be either types or variables, and without a keyword letting you know what kind of statement you’re dealing with, there’s no way of knowing without a complete identifier table. For example, what does this mean:
foo * bar;If foo is a type, that is a pointer declaration. But if it’s a variable, that’s a multiplication expression. Here’s another simple one:
foo(bar);Depending on how foo is defined, that could be a function call or a declaration of a variable bar of type foo, with some meaningless parentheses thrown in.
When you mix things together it gets even more crazy. Check this example from this article:
foo(*bar)();Is bar a pointer to a function returning foo, or is foo a function that takes a bar and returns a function pointer?
letandfnkeywords solve a lot of these ambiguity problems because they let the parser know what kind of statement it’s looking at, so it can know whether identifiers in certain positions refer to types or variables. That makes parsing easier to write and helps give nicer error messages.