The part I don't get with block expressions is that it requires using a label, but the label name is arbitrary/meaningless... It looks like the label serves two

The part I don't get with block expressions is that it requires using a label, but the label name is arbitrary/meaningless... It looks like the label serves two purposes, (1) to signal that the block returns a value and (2) so the statement that returns a value can identify the block it's returning a value for. I guess maybe three purposes, where the third is it lets the "break" keyword be overloaded for the purpose of returning a value from a block since it distinguishes it from other usages of "break". You could, e.g., drop the arbitrary label, just leave the : and it all still works unless you want to nest block expressions and return for the outer block from an inner block (which is pretty iffy, IMO, but could be supported by making the label optional). I'm not sure whether or not colons lying around is a good way to do this, just making the point that the label is arbitrary. (Maybe = or maybe <= before the block and => after break, something like that.)