Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- at:tutorial:basic [2007/04/05 11:35] – elisag
+++ at:tutorial:basic [2007/04/05 14:03] – elisag
@@ Line 144: / Line 144: @@
 </code>
-===== Blocks =====
+===== Closures =====
 The function name can also be used just to refer the function but without calling it. TODO!
-Unlike Pico, AmbientTalk doesn't support function assigment. However, one can assign functions to variables. This means that internally a closure will be created and assigned to the variable. What follows is an example of such manipulation:
+===== Blocks =====
+In AmbientTalk, blocks are merely syntactic sugar for anonymous closures (aka lambdas).  Blocks are creating using the {} braces in the form of:
+<code>
+{ | <parlist> | <body>}
+</code>
+If the block do not require any parameter, the |<parlist>| can be omitted.  Consider a basic block to sum two numbers:
+<code>
+>{| a, b| a+ b} (3,2)
+>>5
+</code>
+Note that the argument list passed to the block can define the different types of arguments previously explained.
+<code>
+>{|a, b, @rest|
+   def total := a + b;
+   foreach: { |el| total := total + el} in: rest; total
+ }(1,2,3)
+>>6
+</code>
+AmbientTalk doesn’t support function assigment. However, one can assign blocks to variables. In order to call the block the name of the variable must be used. If the block defined parameters, these are required to the call as argument list. What follows is an example of such manipulation:
 <code>
->def sum := 0
+>def square := { |x| x * x }
->>0
+>><closure:lambda>
->sum := sum + 1
+>square(1,2)
->>1
->sum := { | x, y| x + y }
->>nil
->sum(1,2)
 >>3
 </code>