Syntax of Declarations

• typed variables, how shall we write these?

• Waldemar proposes:

  var integer a;
  

  and

  function f(integer a)
  

• Won't people think if you can write:

  function f(x)
  

  then surely you can write:

  x
  

  to declare x. We had no consensus this.

• Chris prefers:

  // f returns a value of type T
  function f(x : T) : T
  {
      var x : T;   // declares x of type T
  }
  

• We agree that we don't want to repeat the precedent set by C++ which suffers from an ambigous grammar for type expressions

• The current version of ECMAScript has have labels and labelled breaks, but not goto's. The use of : for labels could make it harder to define the grammar if we adopt : for type expressions

• Waldemar would like to reserve syntax for future use:

  {a:b, c:d}
  

• The colon syntax could cause people confusion as it means that ECMAScript is no longer fully in the C/Java camp but is now mixing in syntax from the Pascal family.

• We nevertheless provisionally agree to the colon syntax but will revisit this in the April meeting to give us all time to check back with our respective companies/customer base.