[fpc-pascal] Re: Delphi's anonymous functions in Free Pascal

[michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2012, Arioch wrote:

>
> Florian Klämpfl wrote
>>
>>
>>>> This is the prototypical way to run a function over each element in a
>>>> collection, returning the results.
>>> (map (lambda (x) (+ x 1)) '(1 2 3))
>>> -> (2 3 4)
>>
>> I still don't see why this cannot be done by procedure variables: one
>> can easily pass a procedure reference to a compare function to any sort
>> library call.
>>
>
> Sorry for resurrecting al thread, but p[erhaps better to keep things
> together.
> 1) "anonymous methods" in Delphi are made in very Pascalish way, a lot of
> wording, a lot of boilerplate.
> That adds to readability, but makes their use much harder. If you have
> relatively complex 4-5 lines function, then the overhead is slightly
> noticeable. But such functions are a borderline to me, having them anonymous
> hampers both ease of read and ease of debug. I know C++ fans how say that
> begin/end are awfully long. Well, Delphi style of anonymous functions would
> frighten them even more.

I don't think anonymous functions should be added to the compiler at all.

They are IMHO a negation of what pascal stands for. If your programming
style is so strange that you need lamba functions or anonymous functions,
then Pascal is simply not for you.

Michael.