Re: On optional parentheses (again, sorry)

:)

On 18 Feb 2005, at 11:44, Russel Winder wrote:
> I had an idle moment so I looked back at one of my more trivial  
> scripts:
>
>         flob = new ArrayList ( )
>         flob.add ( "hello" )
>         println ( flob.get ( 0 ) )
>         println ( flob.size ( ) )
>
> Did I mention it was trivial? 
>
> Anyway I removed all the parentheses:
>
>         adob = new ArrayList ( ) # Parentheses required here 
>         adob.add "hello"
>         println adob.get 0
>         println flob.size
>
> and it ran exactly the same except for the last line which in current
> Groovy is a reference to a method / closure so reported an address
> rather than the value 1.  But it ran.

FWIW in New Groovy it doesn't.

class RussellsOptionalParenTest extends GroovyTestCase {

     void testMethodCallWithOneParam() {
         adob = new ArrayList()
         adob.add "hello"
         println adob.get 0
         println flob.size
     }
}

generates...

/workspace/groovy/groovy-core/src/test-new/groovy/bugs/ 
RussellsOptionalParenTest.groovy:6:26: unexpected token: 0

i.e. you can only omit parens on top level statements (the println).

After I fixed the 2 typeos (no such 'flob' and flob.size currently  
returns the method closure rather than generating a no such property)  
so this version...

class RussellsOptionalParenTest extends GroovyTestCase {

     void testMethodCallWithOneParam() {
         adob = new ArrayList()
         adob.add "hello"
         println adob.get(0)
         println adob.size()
     }
}

it output...

.hello
1

Time: 0.049

OK (1 test)

> I have in the past argued for the former and on the grounds of Javaness
> will probably stick with that but I could live with the latter  
> remaining
> legal Groovy.  My question is will it be in new Groovy?  If so can we
> get rid of the "( )" after the name of the type to create a new object
> of?

I'd be tempted to say, not for zero argument constructors, for the same  
reasons as method calls with zero arguments. Also new is quite heavily  
overloaded with paremeters, arrays, inner classes & closures, so we  
need to be very careful about making things optional. So far you can  
only omit parens on top level method calls.

James
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