Neil Mitchell wrote:
Hi Chris,
I've heard Simon (Peyton-Jones) twice now mention the desire to be able to embed a monadic subexpression into a monad.
I think this is a fantastic idea, please do so!
$( expr ) -- conflicts with template haskell ( <- expr ) -- makes sense, and I think it's unambiguous
Other ideas:
``expr`` -- back-ticks make sense for UNIX shell scripters (| expr |) -- I don't think anything uses this yet
This final (| one |) looks way too much like template haskell, it has the feel of template haskell, even if it isn't yet in the syntax. Your (<- proposal) feels a bit like an operator section - I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but for some reason feels slightly clunky and high-syntax overhead, perhaps because of the inevitable space between the <- and expr, and that ()<- are all fairly high semantic value currently in Haskell, while this extension should blend in, rather than stand out.
I'm not sure I agree with Neil's misgivings. Certainly <- already has a high semantic value, but this is a very closely related notion, so I see that as consistent. As for the (), well as far as I know they only have two meanings: grouping and tupling. This seems like a special case of grouping to me. E.g.: do a <- m b <- n l a x b y becomes l (<- m) x (<- n) y ...with, I suppose, left-to-right evaluation order. This looks 'almost like substitution' which is the goal. Jules