Method call syntax

For object oriented programming, the syntax obj.method(args) can be used instead of method(obj, args). The parentheses can be omitted if there are no remaining arguments: obj.len (instead of len(obj)).

This method call syntax is not restricted to objects, it can be used to supply any type of first argument for procedures:

echo "abc".len # is the same as echo len "abc"
echo "abc".toUpper()
echo {'a', 'b', 'c'}.card
stdout.writeLine("Hallo") # the same as writeLine(stdout, "Hallo")

Another way to look at the method call syntax is that it provides the missing postfix notation.

The method call syntax conflicts with explicit generic instantiations: p[T](x) cannot be written as x.p[T] because x.p[T] is always parsed as (x.p)[T].

See also: Limitations of the method call syntax.

The [: ] notation has been designed to mitigate this issue: x.p[:T] is rewritten by the parser to p[T](x), x.p[:T](y) is rewritten to p[T](x, y). Note that [: ] has no AST representation, the rewrite is performed directly in the parsing step.