On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 10:19:07AM +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
> Really? I'm beginning to have second thoughts about the proposed change to
> negation for Haskell'. The main reason, and this isn't pointed out as well
> as it should be on the wiki, is that "x-1" will cease to be an infix
> application of (-), it will parse as x applied to the literal (-1). And
> this is different from "x - 1" (syntax in which whitespace matters should
> be avoided like the plague, IMO). I think this would be worse than the
> current situation.
White space already matters when it comes to numbers quite a bit
0 x 123 vs 0x123
1.5 vs 1 . 5
3e4 vs 3 e 4
etc.
I think this change is more than worth it. I mean, having to write
(-4) everywhere is bad enough, but when writing polymorphic code,
(fromInteger (-4)) is horrific to embed everywhere. :)
another option would be to only count it as a negative if there is a
non-identifier character preceeding it. A little ugly. but still better
than the current situation IMHO.
John
--
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈
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