On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 02:55:10PM -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote: : Tagentially related: why doesn't simple &+ or &<+> work for what we're : currently spelling &[+] (and which is more specifically spelled : &infix:<+>)?
Oh, and why not &<+>? Mainly because we have lots of infix operators containing < and >, but none containing [ and ], so we use [...] to disambiguate infixes already in things like [X]=. So reusing square brackets for &[+] and [+] is deemed to be a good thing. But also because &<foo> would mean &($/<foo>). [op] is a special form, so it can get away with parsing it's innards specially, whereas infix:<op> is not a special form, insofar as all adverbials are parsed similarly, and infix:['op'] therefore requires quotes, which is going the wrong direction when you're looking for a shortcut. People will get used to seeing [+] and thinking "infix", whereas <+> would always be causing double-takes by its similarity to <=> and such. Larry
