Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> writes: > I think your point is wrong. Without syntax, there can be no written > communication. In Haskell, f.g is not the same as f+g -- the difference > is one of syntax.
In Haskell, (+) and (.) are both functions. (+) takes two numbers as arguments and returns their sum. (.) takes two functions as arguments and returns a new function which composes f and g. 2 + 3 is the same as (+) 2 3. f . g is the same as (.) f g. The infix notations are considered syntax sugar. The parentheses around (+) and (.) are so the compiler doesn't get lexically confused, but you could say add = (+) compose = (.) a = add 2 3 b = compose square cube c = b 2 now "print a" will print 5, and "print c" would print 64 (which is 2**6). (There aren't actually builtins square and cube, but pretend there are). So it's really true you can get rid of almost all Haskell expression syntax. There's actually a preprocessor called Liskell that lets you write Haskell as Lisp-like S-expressions, which is handy if you want to use a macro processor on it. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
