Simon, Malcolm, here's a solution (at risk of more bikeshedding on syntax).
e { foo }
* The braces say 'here comes a record'. * Also say 'expect funny business with names'. * The absence of `=` says this is getFld, not update. * This is not currently valid syntax [**], so we don't break code. * It's postfix. (And only a couple more chars than infix dot.) * So perhaps an IDE can see the opening brace and prompt for fields? (Perhaps some IDE's do this already for record update?)
I like it. It fits with the existing syntax. Nested records are chained: foo{bar}{subbar}{zed}
Possible future development:
e { foo, bar, baz } -- produces a tuple ( _, _, _ ) -- with fields in order given -- _not_ 'canonical' order in the data type
* By coincidence, that syntax is per one of the dialects for relational algebra projection over a tuple.
Not quite so keen on this. I would argue that in relational algebra (which I use a lot, although with a dynamically-type API, rather than strongly-typed), the ordering of columns and rows is never significant, and should never be exposed to the user directly. I long for the day when we can offer a strong-typing to Relations, but it would be worse to pretend that something is kind-of relation-like, without the underlying properties that make it powerful. Regards, Malcolm