Gábor Lehel <illissius@...> writes:
>
> In any case, while I would in theory support spaces around all
> operators, modulo counterexamples such as those presented above, I'm
> not proposing it and I don't think anyone is, so it's probably best to
> stick to discussing spaces around (.) (which I also support).
> Apologies for taking the discussion off topic.
>
I'm not arguing for or against dot (and postfix) as record selector.
I'm not arguing whther or not we should support postfix record selector
(whatever the syntax/symbol).
But _if_ we want postfix, we need to be sure that it binds tighter than
function apply. Some examples (from TDNR observations on 'something odd',
and using `?' as postfix field symbol):
map toUpper customer?lastName
desugar to ===> map toUpper (lastName customer)
m?lookup key
===> (lookup m) key
No other operator binds tighter than even function apply.
So I think the best way to show that is to disallow spaces around the
symbol. "It graphically appeals to the notion of a [name] composed of
several [name]s." As one poster didn't quite put it.
So the advantage of dot from that point of view is:
* dot already appears tightly-bound in qualified names
* dot is already a reserved operator,
so we won't have to search for some other candidate
AntC
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