For most uses...

Post #194,948 by admin 2/16/05 10:47:59 AM Reply	For most uses... The difference is vanishingly small. The main difference is that a closure is a function (more or less) and an anonymous inner class is a class. Another difference is that anonymous classes can't change method local variables, but this can be worked around. So while the syntax is definitely not nearly as nice, the functionality is pretty much there. You might find this interesting as well: [link\|http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlocksInJava\|http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlocksInJava] Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #194,951 by ben_tilly 2/16/05 11:02:12 AM Reply	I did find that interesting. One major complaint down. The fact that it is ugly isn't a new complaint. Java generally is ugly, I expect that. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #194,977 by tuberculosis 2/16/05 12:17:55 PM Reply	You'll find this interesting too - Bistro [link\|http://bistro.sourceforge.net/overview.htm\|http://bistro.source....net/overview.htm] Its a preprocessor that provides smalltalk-ish syntax and capabilities on top of Java. It generates inner classes for the closures. Its been around for at least 5 years. More of a proof of concept than a practical language - there's no debugger support or anything. But the paper is interesting. Also, FWIW, Squeak doesn't have proper closures out of the box - it has BlockContext's instead which also don't do a good job of hanging onto local variables properly (there is a workaround you can use but you have to send the thing a message fixTemps to ask it to hang onto the temp vars). There is a closure implementation done for Squeak, its waiting to be adopted. I think it will end up in there eventually. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush

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