Richard O'Keefe wrote:

... More seriously, in "f x", there is an explicit operator already. It's "f". The space is needed for lexical reasons only. If you say no, functions are not operators -- though in Haskell infix operators are functions -- but application is the operator, so you should write "f @ x http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe" (usual FP notation) or "f.x" (Dijkstra), then although it isn't technically true, I've always felt that there is an infinite regress lurking in the background: if x + y means (+) x y which really stands for (+)@x @ http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe y then shouldn't that in turn stand for (@)((@)(+)x)y and what should _that_ stand for?

Heh, heh there's another corner where Haskell semantics appears to give an infinite regress; and we have to suppose there's some internal magic that can't be expressed in the surface language: Report section 6.4.1 Numeric Literals. "An integer literal represents the application of the function `fromInteger` to the appropriate value of type `Integer`." OK. How do we write in Haskell that "appropriate value"? We could write `7 :: Integer` but that's shorthand for `(fromInteger #7#) :: Integer`, in which I've used `#7#` to denote the "appropriate value" doo-hickey. There's no way in Haskell to write a literal that's type `Integer`, except by invoking `fromInteger`. `(fromInteger (7 :: Integer)) :: Integer` ? Both the explicit and implicit `fromInteger` in there are no-ops. AntC