On 7 Feb, 2013, at 13:24 , Simon Marlow <marlo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/02/13 23:42, Ian Lynagh wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 10:37:44PM +0000, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't have a strong opinion about whether
>>> f ! x y ! z = e
>>> should mean the same; ie whether the space is significant. I think it's
>>> probably more confusing if the space is significant (so its presence or
>>> absence makes a difference).
>>
>> I also don't feel strongly, although I lean the other way:
>>
>> I don't think anyone writes "f ! x" when they mean "f with a strict
>> argument x", and I don't see any particular advantage in allowing it.
>> In fact, I think writing that is less clear than "f !x", so there is an
>> advantage in disallowing it.
>>
>> It also means that existing code that defines a (!) operator in infix
>> style would continue to work, provided it puts whitespace around the !.
>
> FWIW, I really dislike whitespace-significant syntax. f ! x should mean the
> same as f !x. Look at the trouble we have with qualified operators: how many
> people have tried to write [Monday..] and been surprised that it doesn't work?
>
> So I don't mind at all if BangPatterns makes it harder to write a definition
> of '!', because it's much more common to write bang patterns than it is to
> define '!', and the workaround of writing (!) is not that onerous.
>
I agree, I prefer the invariant that lexically whitespace does not matter. It
is easier to understand, implement, and it is not such a big deal to have the
choice of meaning (i.e. bang pattern or infix operator) depend on a LANGUAGE
pragma, (re)defining ! is not that common anyway.
cheers,
- Atze -
Atze Dijkstra, Department of Information and Computing Sciences. /|\
Utrecht University, PO Box 80089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands. / | \
Tel.: +31-30-2534118/1454 | WWW : http://www.cs.uu.nl/~atze . /--| \
Fax : +31-30-2513971 .... | Email: a...@uu.nl ............... / |___\
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