Array assignment / initialization [was Re: synonyms]

[Alex Tweedly]

On 28/06/2017 16:55, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode wrote:

>
> Fully agreed, as I wrote in my post introducing this arg format to the 
> discussion a couple days ago:
>
>     And as much as I like it in R, I'm not sure I would advocate it
>     in an xTalk as any sort of necessity.  It might be ideal for
>     certain types of commands (oh how I'd love it with "export"),
>     but is so unusual compared to most other languages that it may
>     just increase the learning curve for most folks.
I don't accept that named parameters are "unusual" nowadays.
They're in Python, Csharp, R and (if my quick Google got it right) Swift 
- so that 's 5 of the top 20 most "popular" languages now, so I would 
expect that a fairly high proportion of potential LC users would be 
familiar with them.

> More with-the-grain would be this fourth option, passing in an array 
> as we see with some existing LC commands and functions, but that 
> requires a LOT more typing:
>
>   put "my chart" into tA["name"]
>   put 100 into tA["width"]
>   put "This is a chart" into tA["label"]
>   DoSomething tA
>
Yes, it would be nice if we had an easier (terser) way to assign to an 
array. Maybe something like Python / Perl use to assign to a dictionary.

    put { "name": "my chart", "width": 100, "label": "This is a chart", 
"anarray": sAMine } into tA
    DoSomething tA

-- Alex.
btw - whose bright idea was it to not put a 'sharp' key visible on a 
British Mac keyboard :-) ?