Cicada scripting constructs

Cicada stakes it reputation on its ability to mix and match programming constructs that are ordinarily completely different things. For example, it doesn't know the difference between a function, a set and a class, because those are all the same object in Cicada.

But -- if one single object can describe x, y and z, then chances are that it can do some strange things in between as well. What follows is a sampling of unusual raw ingredients that went into the language along with some of their surprising (and unintended) consequences.

• named elements in function arguments
  
    f :: { code, todo = args.op, ... }
  
    f(3, 5, op := "add")
  
  
• commands in a function's arguments
  
    f(a, print("If you see this, 'a' was passed\n"))
  
  
• optional parameters in function calls
  
    sort(a)
    sort(b; direction = decreasing)
  
  
• inheritance (concatenation) of sets
  
    primes :: { 2, 3, 5, 7 }
    odds :: primes : { 1, 9, remove this[1] }
  
  
• inheritance of functions
  
    loop :: {
  
       c1 :: int
  
       code
  
       for c1 in <1, args[1]> &
           f(c1)     }
  
  
    count :: loop : {
  
       f :: { code, print(c1, " ") }
  
       code
  
       print("done!\n")           }
  
  
• code substitution
  
    (gizmo.part[56] << { code, color = "blue", size = { 2, 3, 1 } })()
  
  

Last update: November 12, 2017