Hi, There has been one thing bugging me for a long time that seems worth it to fix, and I was wondering if anyone else has had the same problem. I have enjoyed using Clojure's REPL and embracing a Clojure-style data model for my app, where everything is a glorified map or vector and there are no private fields. I even have a simple dump feature that tells me the entire state of my app <https://github.com/google/hesokuri> that was ridiculously easy to implement, and that takes advantage of the lack of black box data structures.
One thing that doesn't really fit in this paradigm is (ironically) anonymous functions with closures. For instance, (partial + 42) returns an anonymous function, and in the REPL or an app dump, it looks hideous: #<core$partial$fn__4228 clojure.core$partial$fn__4228@1ee1dea2> So I've avoided anonymous functions in my app except when they exist transiently, and don't appear in the dump (for instance, in (map #(str % "!") foo)). But sometimes I just can't avoid a long-lived anonymous function practically. The best solution I've come up with is to transform anonymous functions when preparing the application dump. (See the implementation<https://github.com/google/hesokuri/blob/b60cb7222cfdd672e394ef6f22b80c94278fe3a0/src/hesokuri/see.clj#L35>) This makes (partial + 42) look like this: {:fn-class clojure.core$partial$fn__4228, "arg1" 42, "f" {:fn-class clojure.core$_PLUS_}} Which isn't great (I'd like to have filenames and line numbers for each anon fn, and a nicer name for clojure.core/+), but it's a big improvement. The function's JVM class and the closured values are revealed. It would be nice to implement this natively. Having only passing familiarity with the Clojure code base, to solve it I think one could: - give anonymous functions a .getClosure method which creates a view of the closure on-demand - (optional) change their .toString implementation to include this information - add logic to clojure.pprint to use the .getClosure method (I guess "(defmethod clojure.pprint/simple-dispatch clojure.lang.AFunction etc...)" ?) Another feature that would go nicely with this is smarter equality semantics for anonymous functions, so that any two anonymous functions generated at the same point in code with equal closures are equal. This means if I have a function like this: (defn exclaimer [bangs] #(apply str % (repeat bangs "!"))) then the following would be true: (= (exclaimer 10) (exclaimer 10)), making functions behave a lot more like values. I would love to have this particular feature too, although I'm having trouble coming up with a non-contrived example. I'd like to hear some thoughts on this. Thanks! Matt -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
