Re: [q-lang-users] New 'where' syntax

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

John Cowan wrote:
> To me, the term "guard" (which I think is due to Dijkstra ultimately)
> connotes conditionals but not bindings, so I would prefer to retain
> "qualifier" as a term for both bindings and conditionals.

That's my gut feeling, too, and it corresponds to the traditional notion
of "guard" that I know. But then there's Peyton-Jones' notion of
"pattern guards" [1] which are exactly like Q's 'where' clauses. (Well,
I guess that I can say that I reinvented them independently, not knowing
PJ's proposal.) Wikipedia also calls them "guards", referring to PJ [2].
I'm not sure, however, how common that usage of "guard" is in the
general FP community.

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/Haskell/guards.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_(computing)

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag