Re: Re : Re : [Haskell-cafe] Indentation woes

On Thu, Jul 26, 2007 at 08:17:06PM -0400, anon wrote:

2007/7/26, Stefan O'Rear :

...

Out of curiousity, what do you find objectionable about (legal):

function argument argument2 | guard = body | guard = body

as compared to (currently illegal):

function argument argument2 | guard = body | guard = body

The extra space, obviously :-) I'm well aware that this is an issue of vanishingly small consequence, but one could likewise dismiss the entire layout business as a needlessly complicated way to save a few keystrokes if one were so inclined. If language complexity is the chief concern, why not dispense with layout altogether (and a few more things beside)? Perhaps fuzzy notions of aesthetics and intuitiveness should weigh into the equation as well unless you don't mind programming in the unadorned lambda calculus.

Definitely, and Haskell *was* designed to be aesthetic. I suppose what I'm really trying to ask is *why* you think the second should be legal. To me it just seems like an ugly ad-hoc generalization, and ad-hoc generalizations are something Haskell tries to avoid. (There's a bit of background on the syntax design process in SPJ's History of Haskell paper, page 10 of http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/history.pdf). Stefan