Functional metapost called it (#). But for me (>>>) is ok. It is even more descriptive than (&).
The reason I feel that >>> is inadequate is because it requires that you use either parens or $ in order to finally apply the chain of functions to a value. Also, being part of a typeclass can scare newcomers from using/understanding it. (foo >>> bar >>> baz) val foo >>> bar >>> baz $ val Blegh. Part of the reason I like |> is because it *is* a little more clutter-y than &. This forces you to use it prudently, with adequate whitespace. For example, when I was writing a StackOverflow answer[1] a few days ago, I found that using this operator was unreadable unless I used additional newlines. Lining up the |> operators actually produces a rather nice visual effect, as if you were entering each transformation at a command prompt. The vertical bars lining up is also nice. Consider the "butt-ugly" code (according to Thomas): ("hello","world") & _1.traverse %~ toUpper & _2 .~ 42 Rewritten with whitespace, it can look much prettier: ("Hello", "world") |> _1.traverse %~ toUpper |> _2 .~ 42 This style is reminiscent of the style often used for long chains of object-oriented method calls. & works just as well with the additional whitespace, but complaints about the line noise caused by |> go away also. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/13432926/208257 -- Dan Burton