On Feb 28, 10:34 am, joshua-choi <rbysam...@gmail.com> wrote: > As a small note, according tohttp://clojure.org/reader, Clojure > keywords and symbols are allowed to contain only alphanumeric > characters, *, +, !, -, _, and ?. Spaces aren’t allowed, but the > keyword function allows them anyway because it doesn’t do any checking > for validity for performance. I’m told that it’s up to the programmer > to make sure that only valid keywords are created.
Thanks for those details. > I agree that clojure.contrib.json should default to string keys, > because keywords are so limited. The thing is, when > clojure.contrib.json *does* convert JSON keys into Clojure keywords, > should it check for validity and fail when it cannot create a valid > keyword? I personally would really appreciate the check, and fail with a sane message. Ultimately, I believe that allowing keywords to be created that violate the language spec is an error and a meaningful error should be thrown. I believe correctness should be more important than speed when core language functionality is concerned. The current situation is that I can legally create Clojure structs that fail to serialize correctly. This is a fundamental component of the language that simply must work correctly. If not, incidental complexity is increased. For an example outside of JSON: recently Compojure changed how it works so the HTTP request properties are all converted to keywords by default. I can see the appeal, but now anyone using Compojure has the increased incidental complexity of possible keyword violations. Imagine if you were integrating with PayPal or some system that had HTTP parameters with characters that were not allowed by the Clojure spec. I really don't want to worry about such things when creating software with Clojure. I'm starting to think that perhaps keywords should only be used in Clojure source code as syntactic sugar to access maps - but the recent changes to Clojure have made them less useful in this regard because maps now have to actually contain keywords instead of the keyword name string. I think this is something that could be a constant source of difficulty with Clojure. I'm curious what others think. Cheers. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
