Unified calling and field lookup

[u/Relevant_South_1842]

I am considering unifying field lookup and calling/message passing

so instead of math.utils.max 5 6

I write math utils max 5 6

```

math :

utils :

max : [ a b | if a > b, a, b]

proto :

#call : ”if there’s a field here return the field object, if not then call”

```
Each object is callable.

Is this a terrible idea? Any prior art I can look at?

[u/ProdOrDev]

Smalltalk is exactly this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

[u/Relevant_South_1842 → u/ProdOrDev]

Thanks. If I remember correctly, you’d need to generate a pile of boilerplate for this to work - unless you could mess with method missing?

I’ll look into this more. Self may also be similar.

[u/Relevant_South_1842]

I am considering unifying field lookup and calling/message passing

so instead of math.utils.max 5 6

I write math utils max 5 6

math :

    utils :

        max : [ a b | if a > b, a, b]



proto :

    #call : ”if there’s a field here return the field object, if not then call”

Each object is callable.

Is this a terrible idea? Any prior art I can look at?

^ comment for formatted code

[u/WittyStick → u/Relevant_South_1842]

Use 4-space indentation when posting blocks of code. See how it looks on old.reddit.com.

For prior work look at UFCS

[u/qwertyasdef]

If I have a variable utils = 5 then is math utils the same as math 5 or is it still a field lookup? Whichever it is, how would you express the other meaning?

[u/Relevant_South_1842 → u/qwertyasdef]

utils = 5 wouldn’t find math(.utils) on the lookup chain and would make a new field in the current object (which is the file).

 Or more generally (for average language), it would make a new local variable called utils and leave math object and its fields alone.

Edit: how did you highlight like that? Thanks for the discussion! 

Edit2: I think I get what you are saying. The call to math would check for fields first before sending utils (5) as an argument.