Unofficial wish list status.

[Chris Nicholson-Sauls]

Xinok wrote:
> -- array initialization/literals
> They gave this design for initalizing associative arrays:
> int[char[]] aa = ["one":1, "two":2, "three":3]
> 
> This design would be a problem if you used a conditional ? : for the index. My design:
> int[char[]] aa = [["one"] = 1, ["two"] = 2, ["three"] = 3];
> int[][int] aa = [[0] = [15, 30], [1] = [45, 60, 75]];
> int[int][int] aa = [[0][1] = 15, [2][3] = 30]; // This would be nice, though I'm
> not sure if it would work

I believe the choice of the colon for this was based on the syntax for static struct 
initializers:

# struct S {
#   int    i ;
#   char[] t ;
# }
#
# static S myS = {i: 42, t: "hello"};

But personally I think something like this would work well for assoc's:
# int[char[]] aa = [
#   "one"   => 1 ,
#   "two"   => 2 ,
#   "three" => 3
# ]

It makes a new operator, aye, but I don't believe a '=>' is used anywhere else.  It also 
should not be ambiguous for the compiler, as an array literal's type is taken from the 
first element, and this would make the first element a key=>value of type char[]=>int.

-- Chris Nicholson-Sauls