On 4/25/2012 12:57 AM, Left Right wrote:
In {a.b.c} the compiler has to understand what a, b, and c resolve to,what [Bindable] metadata there is on each one, etc. It uses the syntax tree and the symbol table to do this.This is very far from reality. What compiler does is actually like this: < ... {the expression that appears in between the curly bracket} .../> ==> var anotherBinding:Function = function():* { return the expression that appears in between the curly bracket; } It builds the trees and does all the code analysis much-much later after all bindings are already generated into AS3 code. So, at the time of binding generation the compiler has no idea what's inside the expression. It only knows where it copied the expression from so that once the AS3 lexer or later layers of the compiler find an error, it will know to reroute it to the place where the error happened in the original source code (which, quite often doesn't work). In some special cases the compiler can analyze the type (probably functions, classes, strings), but this is rare. I would also repeat that we are trying to solve the problem too early. We really need to have a direction and a plan of what to do with MXML. So far it is an ad hoc created set of random rules, it repeats all the mistakes of the early programmers (from before 30 years ago at least). This initiative is very good in the sense it welcomes this discussion and some more analysis, but we really need to formulate the strategy and rules we want to keep to when dealing with MXML. There are a lot of things good and bad we have to at least compare MXML to before we start making changes. Some things to consider: cpp (C++ preprocessor and templates) Lisp macros T4 templates in MSVS JSP / Coldfusion MXML today is a concrete set of rigid arbitrary rules, in terms of the development of computer science this roughly equals to the early assembler macros predating C and C++, where this was already made more generic and configurable. I think we could do better than that. Best. Oleg
Amen to that!
