Experts,
While doing research on syntax and operations for collections, I
discovered that Microsoft already defines a set of query operators in
the .NET framework, known as LINQ. See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb394939.aspx
This rather complete and powerful. I soon realized that they can be
implemented with method calls and lambda expressions. The only new EL
syntax that is needed would be the constructors for collections, so
it'll cost us very little to support it. I believe we should just adopt
these operators (or a subset) in our EL 3.0. I don't see any points in
re-inventing the wheels.
I have some notes on this on the wiki
http://java.net/projects/el-spec/pages/CollectionOperations
I'll pursue this more and maybe even implement a couple of operators to
make sure that it is feasible.
Hope you are as excited as I am about including LINQ support in EL 3.0. :-)
Kin-man