On 11/11/10 4:21 PM, Rick Richardson wrote:
> I prefer the first option. Even though I consider Haskell my second
> language, I still find the => hard to parse.
Much as I love Haskell, I agree: the first option is easier to read.
Also, it has more of the feel of quantifiers (a la \forall, \exists,...)
which is a boon IMO. In particular, this boon makes it syntactically
possible to "share" constraints among multiple definitions. That is, we
could provide the syntax:
where foo...
def bar...
def baz...
which would be interpreted as a shorthand for:
def foo... => bar...
def foo... => baz...
When you have a bunch of related definitions, being able to share
constraints like this can cut down a lot on boilerplate. It also
suggests the (possibly dubious?) idea of having nested 'where' clauses
for specifying constraints with differing scopes. Of course, both of
these suggestions raise deeper questions about what the scope of the
type variables really is, i.e. how quantification should be handled in
the face of mutual recursion and the like... So that's probably better
left to the future.
--
Live well,
~wren
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