Re: Composition operator [was: Re: Records in Haskell]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 17:33, Donn Cave wrote:

Quoth Brandon Allbery ,

...

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 17:14, Donn Cave wrote:

...

"Spaces or unicode" would be the worst idea yet, but hopefully that isn't what you meant.

Thing is, I think the spaces idea is considered acceptable because it's *already there*. Take a look at how GHC decides whether (.) is the composition operator or a module qualification.

... what is the rationale for an additional unicode dot?

That's why I more or less assume that wasn't what he meant, that both " . " and "<unicode dot>" would be supported at the same time for composition, but rather just that one or the other would be chosen.

Seems obvious to me: on the one hand, there should be a plain-ASCII version of any Unicode symbol; on the other, the ASCII version has shortcomings the Unicode one doesn't (namely the existing conflict between use as composition and use as module and now record qualifier). So, the Unicode one requires support but avoids weird parse issues. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms