[xscott]

Only `b` has the equivalent of "superfluous parens".

It's practically your job to defend Rust, so I don't expect you to budge even one inch. However, I hate the idea of letting you mislead the casual reader that this is somehow equivalent and "just how languages work".

The grammar could've used `Generic[Specific]` with square brackets and avoided the need for the turbo fish.

[steveklabnik]

It hasn't been my job to work on Rust in for years now. And even then, it was not to "defend" Rust, but to write docs. I talk about it on my own time, and I have often advocated for change in Rust based on my conversations with users.

If you're being overly literal, yes, the <>s are needed here for this exact syntax. My point was not about this specific example, it's that these forms are equivalent, but some of them are syntactically simpler than others. The existence of redundant forms does not make the syntax illegitimate, or overly complex.

For this specific issue, if square brackets were used for generics, then something else would have to change for array indexing, and folks would be complaining that Rust doesn't do what every other language does here, which is its own problem.

[xscott]

> For this specific issue, if square brackets were used for generics, then something else would have to change for array indexing

The compiler knows when the `A` in `A[B]` is a type vs a variable.

[kstrauser]

> The grammar could've used `Generic[Specific]` with square brackets and avoided the need for the turbo fish.

But then people would grouse about it using left-bracket and right-bracket as brackets in a type "context".

[GoblinSlayer]

The problem here is that angle brackets are semantics dependent syntax. Whether they are brackets or not depends on semantic context. Conversely square brackets are always brackets.

[xscott]

Lol, yes they would. However, I wouldn't. :-)