Let's take a step back and look at this idea from a new user's view.
The way I see it, whatever we do, we'll have to explain to users how
to create sets. Hashmaps, and vectors follow (roughly) the JSON/Python
syntax:
vector = [1 2 3 4]
map = {1 2 3 4}
So how to these languages represent sets?
Python does it via extra syntax sugar:
set = {"foo", "bar"}
map = {"foo": "bar", "foo2" : "bar2"}
I think the thing we have to keep in mind is that I can't think of a
single other language that has set literals. So whatever we come up
with will be a bit bizzare to new users. So let's look at the options
given above:
{{"foo"}} ;; looks like a hash of a hash
<{"foo"}> ;; could work, but no other form in all of clojure has two
forms at the end.
#{"foo"} ;; not exactly pretty
My thoughts are this...who actually uses the literal hash set? In the
thousands of lines of Clojure code I've written a hash set once. So my
first reaction is why have a literal at all? Why not use:
On top of that, lets say we do want a literal syntax...if we have to
teach some bizarre syntax that people will rarely use...what's the big
difference between #{} and <{}> ?
If we want to actually go back to the original lisps, they didn't have
any special syntax at all, besides the quote literal. This isn't
ruby/python/C#. If something can be implemented without syntactic
sugar, most times it should be. So my question for Cedric is...why all
the fuss about set? Why not just use (set ["foo", "bar"]) it's clean,
and makes plenty of sense to newbies.
Timothy
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