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2011-11-07EEP-23: Allow variables in fun M:F/ABjörn Gustavsson
Currently, the external fun syntax "fun M:F/A" only supports literals. That is, "fun lists:reverse/1" is allowed but not "fun M:F/A". In many real-life situations, some or all of M, F, A are not known until run-time, and one is forced to either use the undocumented erlang:make_fun/3 BIF or to use a "tuple fun" (which is deprecated). EEP-23 suggests that the parser (erl_parse) should immediately transform "fun M:F/A" to "erlang:make_fun(M, F, A)". We have not followed that approach in this implementation, because we want the abstract code to mirror the source code as closely as possible, and we also consider erlang:make_fun/3 to be an implementation detail that we might want to remove in the future. Instead, we will change the abstract format for "fun M:F/A" (in a way that is not backwards compatible), and while we are at it, we will move the translation from "fun M:F/A" to "erlang:make_fun(M, F, A)" from sys_pre_expand down to the v3_core pass. We will also update the debugger and xref to use the new format. We did consider making the abstract format backward compatible if no variables were used in the fun, but decided against it. Keeping it backward compatible would mean that there would be different abstract formats for the no-variable and variable case, and tools would have to handle both formats, probably forever. Reference: http://www.erlang.org/eeps/eep-0023.html
2009-11-20The R13B03 release.OTP_R13B03Erlang/OTP