Quoth AntC
It was a surprise to me that dot without spaces around is still legal syntax for function composition.
It isn't even unusual. You can find stuff like "fromIntegral.ord" in packages downloaded to build cabal-install for example. It graphically appeals to the notion of a function composed of several functions, so the programmers in question will likely not even be repentant! It's hard to imagine this all going anywhere, really, without some way around the code breakage. Maybe a different separator, like record\field, that really doesn't occur in infix like that.
Are all pseudo- or virtual or calculated 'fields'. (Or if not fields, then attributes or properties.)
I presume you're not suggesting we have both a function `area' and a pseudo- field `.area'?
Well - there's no conflict between those two names, if `.area' is an identifier that starts with a dot. But virtual or calculated fields would presumably not be supported. Depends on whether it's legal to define a function `.area', or `.' spelling is allowed only for declared record fields. Personally I think the latter would be the right choice there - left of the dot must be a record value, right of the dot must be a field declared for that record. I understand this is not the direction you're going. Donn