> In terms of the grammar, it is a special case of #1
yes.
> This example maybe helps explain why this might be surprising:
> spawn $action;
Aha, so if I can write spawn closure, why can't I do the same with a
variable?
Yes, this creates an inconsistency.
that's to be expected since the parentheses were removed.
>
> This feels like a stretch to me
>
From the perspective of how responsibility is distributed in the code, this
would be correct.
But it has nothing to do with syntax consistency.
>
> From the user's point of view, it might be just as obvious that the
closure put into a variable two lines above can also be called with zero
arguments.
> It's only as unclear as any other code involving a variable - if it's
badly named and defined 100 lines away,
> you'll have a problem, but no syntax can solve that.
>
That's correct. But I'm not sure it's that destructive in practice.
>
> I tried to make clear that the keywords could stand in for anything
Yes, you want to keep the concise syntax while eliminating ambiguity with
the variable.
>
> Specifically, what is the use case where syntax #2, "spawn function_call"
is not good enough, leading us to add a special case into the grammar.
>
Additional parentheses around + parentheses after. That is, (closure)().
The goal is to get rid of this construct.
>
> Will it? By who, when? Honest question, and comes back to my point about
identifying the use case.
>
Honest answer: I can't say for sure.
I can assume that closures help define a small sub-area within a piece of
code that performs a specific task. How common is this situation in the
context of coroutines? Maybe not that much.
A safer approach would be to implement only syntax 2 and consider the
alternative option only if user feedback suggests it's needed. Sounds like
a solution without drawbacks...
> If return values end up somewhere, I don't think it would be hard to
come up with examples that were slightly more than one function call, but
still fit in a single-expression closure.
like:
```php
spawn fn() => [file_get_content(), file_get_content(), file_get_content()]
```
At this point, I haven't been able to come up with examples where such a
closure would actually be convenient.
Maybe this use case will emerge later.