On Mar 3, 2012, at 3:24 PM, Dean Landolt wrote: > On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 5:20 PM, David Herman <dher...@mozilla.com> wrote: > This argument seems to over-reach. C and C++ use -> for pointer indirection. > Perl uses -> for method calls. > > This is precisely why it can't really be overloaded any further.
It's not "overloading" when different languages use a symbol for different purposes. They're different languages-- they are by definition different notational systems! There's not some global registry of ASCII art where each language stakes a permanent claim to a universal meaning for a given symbol. There's tons of precedent for -> to be visually interpreted as an arrow and for arrows to be used for different purposes. That there is variety across languages is evidence of the *flexibility* of the symbol, not of its being closed off to repurposing. > Does it have to be ascii? The growlix space of unicode is vast: > https://plus.google.com/109925364564856140495/posts > > Reaching into the depths of unicode was roundly panned during the function > shorthand debates but Allen's reach for ◁ is compelling -- is it really so > bad to just go all in for it? Yes. There are so many points in the pipeline, from programmer to server to router to browser, where encoding bugs can crop up. And anyway the point is *not* to make it look like an exotic alien glyph in the middle of a program. :) > FWIW I personally think <| is just fine :) All I can say is it looks terrible. I don't have any way to quantify that, of course. Dave
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