Edward Kmett wrote:
Luke pretty much nailed the summary of what you can parse using Applicative means. I tend to consider them "codata CFGs", because they can have infinite breadth and depth. However, a 'codata CFG' can handle a much larger class of languages than CFGs.
Aren't CFGs banned in most countries due to concerns about the ozone layer?
And yes, one of the major motivating ideas behind Arrows were the parsers of Swierstra and Duponcheel (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.48.2446).
Doesn't surprise me... ;-) I'm not sure what such a parser would look like, but by the looks of it enough people have made them that I ought to be able to find some examples to look at if I search around. (I must say, while the idea of arrows sounds nice, I've never actually tried using them due to the complexity of the mere syntax.)