I don't much like square brackets or angle brackets or guillemets. But here is
a different way
of reducing the need for parentheses at least for the common case:
A proposal for fewer irritating parentheses!
One thing to note is that generic functions & types are *different* from
existing things like const, func, type, var. As such they should have their
own declaration marker. For example
gen T type pair struct { a, b T } // contrast with type pair(type
T) ...
gen T,U type W struct { a T; b U } // contrast with type W(type T,
U) ...
gen T func Print(s []T) {...} // print a slice of T
These function/type/method generics are used by *prepending* the type:
var x int pair // a pair of ints
var y (int, int pair) W // here we have to use parentheses
int Print([]int{1,2,3}) // print a slice of ints
qq := int pair pair{{1,2},{3,4}} // a pair of a pair of ints
ww := (int, int) W pair{{1,2},{3,4}}
This use may seem weird if you are used to C/C++. I find it more readable
than having to deal with extra parentheses. "int pair" clearly says a
pair of ints and so on. What is more, if in future types are allowed to be
*inferred* for generic function calls, you can simply drop the type prefix.
If there is still a parsing ambiguity, I'd suggest adding a - as in int-pair.
Additional type syntax rule:
type: ... | type generic-type| (type-list) generic-type
or
type: ... | type "-" generic-type | (type-list) "-" generic-type
FWIW I thought of this four weeks ago (June 16).
> On Jul 14, 2020, at 3:29 PM, 'gri' via golang-nuts
> <golang-nuts@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Correction: The last paragraph in the post below should have said: "In Go,
> type information is not available at parse time". (Of course, type
> information is available at compile time.)
>
> On Tuesday, July 14, 2020 at 2:56:01 PM UTC-7 gri wrote:
> We have received a variety of feedback on the generics draft design
> <https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/refs/heads/master/design/go2draft-contracts.md>
> (blog <https://blog.golang.org/generics-next-step>). Thanks to everyone who
> took the time to read it, play with generics code in the playground
> <https://go2goplay.golang.org/>, file issues, and send us their thoughts.
>
> Not unexpectedly, many people raised concerns about the syntax, specifically
> the choice of parentheses for type parameter declarations and generic type
> and function instantiations.
>
> A typical computer keyboard provides four easily accessible pairs of
> single-character symmetrical "brackets": parentheses ( and ), square brackets
> [ and ], curly braces { and }, and angle brackets < and >. Go uses curly
> braces to delineate code blocks, composite literals, and some composite
> types, making it virtually impossible to use them for generics without severe
> syntactic problems. Angle brackets require unbounded parser look-ahead or
> type information in certain situations (see the end of this e-mail for an
> example). This leaves us with parentheses and square brackets. Unadorned
> square brackets cause ambiguities in type declarations of arrays and slices,
> and to a lesser extent when parsing index expressions. Thus, early on in the
> design, we settled on parentheses as they seemed to provide a Go-like feel
> and appeared to have the fewest problems.
>
> As it turned out, to make parentheses work well and for
> backward-compatibility, we had to introduce the type keyword in type
> parameter lists. Eventually, we found additional parsing ambiguities in
> parameter lists, composite literals, and embedded types which required more
> parentheses to resolve them. Still, we decided to proceed with parentheses in
> order to focus on the bigger design issues.
>
> The time has come to revisit this early decision. If square brackets alone
> are used to declare type parameters, the array declaration
>
> type A [N]E
>
> cannot be distinguished from the generic type declaration
>
> type A[N] E
>
> But if we are comfortable with the extra type keyword, the ambiguity
> disappears:
>
> type A[type N] E
>
> (When we originally dismissed square brackets, the type keyword was not yet
> on the table.)
>
> Furthermore, the ambiguities that arise with parentheses appear not to arise
> with square brackets. Here are some examples where extra parentheses are not
> needed with square brackets:
>
> using () using []
> func f((T(int)) func f(T[int])
> struct{ (T(int)) } struct{ T[int] }
> interface{ (T(int)) } interface{ T[int] }
> [](T(int)){} []T[int]{}
>
> To test this better understanding, and to get a feel for this alternative
> notation, we will begin to make changes to our prototype implementation such
> that it accepts either parentheses or square brackets (only one or the other)
> in a generic Go package. Those changes will first appear as commits to the
> dev.go2go branch <https://go.googlesource.com/go/+/refs/heads/dev.go2go>, and
> eventually in the playground <https://go2goplay.golang.org/>.
>
> If square brackets don't lead to unforeseen issues, we have another fully
> explored notation to choose from, which will allow us to make a more informed
> decision.
>
> - gri, iant
>
> PS: For ambiguities with angle brackets consider the assignment
>
> a, b = w < x, y > (z)
>
> Without type information, it is impossible to decide whether the right-hand
> side of the assignment is a pair of expressions
>
> (w < x), (y > (z))
>
> or whether it is a generic function invocation that returns two result values
>
> (w<x, y>)(z)
>
> In Go, type information is not available at compile time. For instance, in
> this case, any of the identifiers may be declared in another file that has
> not even been parsed yet.
>
>
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