Steven Chen (Dec 19 2023 at 23:28): Steven Chen (Dec 19 2023 at 23:28):I really like the record update capability but am also curious the syntax design. Let's use this example:
a = {x: 1, y: 2}
b = {a & x: 3, y: 4}
1) a is a record but it is inside the curly brackets (feels/reads like a is field in b).
2) the strange feeling on the precedence of & operator. Everything following & is the update. But due to the comma, we might also read as: update x in a to 3 and set as value for field a, add another field y to b which is 4.
IMHO, the update syntax would look better with b = a & {x: 3, y: 4} to avoid those two confusions (maybe just me :smile: )
Ryan Bates (Dec 20 2023 at 00:16):I agree the record update syntax isn't intuitive and has tripped me up a few times. It still feels out of place to me after working with Roc for a few weeks.
It sounds like a & b will be difficult to implement as discussed in this thread. However I think it deserves more discussion.
Richard Feldman (Dec 20 2023 at 00:25):we could make & have to always be followed by { to fix that problem, but I feel like that would be confusing to beginners in different ways :sweat_smile:
Steven Chen (Dec 20 2023 at 00:32):Richard Feldman said:
we could make
&have to always be followed by{to fix that problem, but I feel like that would be confusing to beginners in different ways :sweat_smile:
that seems worse :sweat_smile: . i will resolve this thread given the existing thread in ideas channel covered everything i wrote here.
Notification Bot (Dec 20 2023 at 00:32):Steven Chen has marked this topic as resolved.
Last updated: Nov 09 2025 at 12:14 UTC