Github user cestella commented on the issue:
https://github.com/apache/metron/pull/687
hah, well @nickwallen, laziness is often a good trait in a developer.
Honestly, I am ok with *not* migrating here in favor of more intuitive
approaches. I chose `:=` because I needed the functionality and worried about
making the language more complex (there's something different about a language
that has assignments versus an expression language. I wanted to keep it an
expression language at the time.), so I was forced to choose a character
sequence that didn't exist as a lexable token. Now, honestly, we're already
halfway down that road, so probably the right thing to do *is* deprecate it and
rip the bandaid fast. I honestly could be convinced either way.
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