Feature request: Add syntax sugar for dictionary access

[jaysonsantos]

Hey there, first, thank you very much for the project, it is quite handy for me.
What do you think of being able to use ? on dictionaries access?
So instead of writing this:

let data = @[
    a: 1
]
function get_value_by_key(key)
    data[key]
end

function get_value()
    get_value_by_key("b")
end

std.print(std.catch(get_value))

one could write this:

let data = @[
    a: 1
]

function get_value()
    data["b"]?
end

std.print(get_value())

[gahag]

Sounds like a great feature for me! But I believe we'll have to use another symbol instead of ?, as that one is already used. Perhaps something like:

let data = @[ a: 1 ]
std.assert(data:a == 1)
std.assert(data:["a"] == 1)
std.assert(data:a:b == nil)
std.assert(data:["c"]:["d"] == nil)

Does that seem reasonable to you?

[a-moreira]

@gahag makes sense to me!
we could also go with :- to keep consistency with Bash :-)

[jaysonsantos]

@gahag sure, either way would be nice. I thought of ? because it could also short circuit functions.
I mean, the operator I said, was not to access the field itself, but to change how access work, like, first making invalid index not panicking, and then the ? to do the check of error, like rust's Result.
Or, if dicts would always return nil for invalid indexes, ? would behave like rust functions that return Optional<T>