Re: [Haskell-cafe] (A little humour)

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Dan Piponi wrote:

In the proposed notation, within [[]]'s there is an implied <*> for every space.

Come to think of it, surely that's why they're called *applicative* functors. In Haskell, a space between identifiers corresponds implicitly to the 'application' operator. (Sometimes it's written explicitly as @, as in http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.54.6644). Applicative functors are simply a mechanism to allow the redefinition of application, just like how monads allow you to 'redefine' the semicolon. -- Dan