Larry observed:
> My feeling on this is that the compiler should simply hardwire this
> particular adverb so that all the tests can be autogenerated, and the
> multi system never needs to see those versions.
I strongly agree.
> We are merely hijacking the adverb syntax so that is clear which
> operator is being modified. There is no need for the late binding of
> multi. It's just a "reserved adverb" if you will. Which probably means
> it should be something unlikely to collide with user-defined adverbs.
> Maybe something in all caps. For what it's worth, :OK<> can be typed
> with one hand while the other holds down the shift key. :)
Typical right-hander fascism!
We do indeed want to encourage testing by making it easy to write tests,
but naming it :TEST<> makes it far easier to *read* tests, which seems
to me a better long-term optimization.
We would probably also want a mechanism for switching tests on or off in
a given compilation unit, or globally, so they can be placed in (and left in!)
production code. Perhaps we could use the same mechanism for PRE{...}
and POST{...} blocks as well? Which also suggests that a general TEST
{...} block (which only runs if testing is enabled) might be valuable?
Damian
