Jeremy Gibbons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> in
gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general:
> But in FP, of course, functions are first class citizens. So one may get
> ambiguities on account of it being reasonable to treat a particular
> function either as "program" or as "data" - with conflicting outcomes...
> Suppose one wants to streamline notation, so
> that instead of having to write
> (f . g) $ x
> one can write
> f @ g @ x
> Here, "@" means either composition or application according to context. It
> is supposed to be associative, so it isn't the same as normal Haskell $;
> in particular,
> f @ g
> is valid and represents the composition of f and g.
Indeed, I've been thinking about such a notation, but one that
explicitly specifies whether to treat a function as "program" or "data".
Variables like "f" always denote data to start with; such data can be
thought of as a program that maps unit to a function. Data can be
turned into a program by unquoting it with "," (usually I write "@" for
unquotation but you use it for composition already). (Conversely, a
program can be turned into data by enclosing it in a pair of quotation
brackets "[]", a la Joy; unquotation cancels quotation by the reduction
step ,[X] => X.) Now
(f . g) $ x
in Haskell notation is written
,f @ ,g @ x
We also distinguish between
,thrice @ thrice
and
,thrice @ ,thrice
An advantage of this notation is that it exposes the symmetry between
call-by-value and call-by-name evaluation: right-to-left evaluation here
corresponds to call-by-value, argument-first evaluation; left-to-right
evaluation here corresponds to call-by-name evaluation. I could go on
and on about this.
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