Name: rmT116609 Date: 06/12/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
It would be really nice to provide special syntax for methods of certain core interfaces:

1) Variable x declared to be an instance of a class implementing java.util.List,
     x[i] could be compiled as x.get(i)
  and
     x[i] = y could compiled as x.set(i, y)

2) Variable x declared to be an instance of a class implementing java.util.Map,
      x{k} could be compiled as x.get(k)
    and
      x{k} = y could be compiled as x.put(k, y)

3) For x and y that are instances of classes implementing an interface (yet to be specified, maybe java.lang.Number) that defines arithmetic operations as add, subtract, multiply, lessThan etc.

    x + y is compiled as x.add(y)
    x - y is compiled as x.subtract(y)
    x * y is compiled as x.multiply(y)
    ...
    x < y is compiled as x.lessThan(y)

etc.

JUSTIFICATION :
These are patterns that appear in code again and again, so it's worth providing syntax for making code more concise and make the intention of the code clearer.
(Review ID: 187748)
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