Nicolas Frisby wrote: > Let's remember that if something is broke, it's only _right_ to _fix_ > it. I patiently waited for someone else to make that pun. > > Understanding the language won't be much harder, but understanding > fixity declarations will become a task. Consider: > > infixl -1.7521 -- what and why? > > As the operator space becomes more dense, negative and fractional > fixities are going to become more obfuscated. The negative and > fractional fixities will satisfy a number purposes well, but they will > also be abused and lead to confusion. > > This smells like a wart growing on a wart to me.
All these are valid points. However, given that we can't completely redesign, implement and test a new fixity system in time for Haskell', it makes sense to make a simple change that unambiguously improves the current system, and is no more difficult to implement (in fact, I bet it adds zero lines of code to the compiler). Cheers, Simon > Nick > > On 11/7/06, David House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On 07/11/06, Jon Fairbairn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> I must say though, that I don't like the reasoning that we >>> can put in fractional fixities because it's a small >>> change. The way to hell is through a series of small >>> steps. If using integers to express fixities is a bit of a >>> hack, switching to rational numbers is a hack on top of a >>> hack. >> >> Well, It's a _conceptually_ simple idea, one that doesn't make >> understanding the language much harder. >> >> Also, it provides an infinite space for fixities. I think the problem >> 'binds tighter than X but not as tight as Y', where X and Y are only >> fixity integer apart is somewhat common, and this would fix it. It >> would allow for extensibility into the future, where the operator >> space will only become more dense, and maintaining a complete order >> with only 10 integers to play will become more and more difficult. >> Allowing an infinite amount of operators to come between any two >> operators sounds like a solid design decision to me. >> >> -- >> -David House, [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> _______________________________________________ >> Haskell-Cafe mailing list >> Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org >> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe _______________________________________________ Haskell-prime mailing list Haskell-prime@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-prime