Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-31 Thread Brandon S Allbery KF8NH
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On 10/29/10 22:30 , wren ng thornton wrote:
> On 10/29/10 8:33 PM, C. McCann wrote:
>> I suggest U+2621.
> 
> I'm not sure I'd've ever recognized a funny 'z' as "caution sign"... :)

You'd have to be a TeX / Metafont user to get that one.  (The LaTeX book
doesn't use that symbol for "caution", so I don't count LaTeX users so much.)

- -- 
brandon s. allbery [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl]  allb...@kf8nh.com
system administrator  [openafs,heimdal,too many hats]  allb...@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university  KF8NH
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-31 Thread Brandon S Allbery KF8NH
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On 10/29/10 20:33 , C. McCann wrote:
> I suggest U+2621.

Did you mean U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES there?

- -- 
brandon s. allbery [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl]  allb...@kf8nh.com
system administrator  [openafs,heimdal,too many hats]  allb...@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university  KF8NH
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-29 Thread C. McCann
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:30 PM, wren ng thornton  wrote:
>> I suggest U+2621.
>
> I'm not sure I'd've ever recognized a funny 'z' as "caution sign"... :)

Well, I'm operating under the assumption that it's one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbaki_dangerous_bend_symbol

I would not be at all surprised at people working on Unicode being
familiar with Knuth's use of the symbol.

- C.
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-29 Thread wren ng thornton

On 10/29/10 8:33 PM, C. McCann wrote:

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 7:54 PM, wren ng thornton  wrote:

I'm sort of torn on this issue. On the one hand (#) has great potential as
an operator, on the other hand I've found that having something like
-XMagicHash (or TeX's \makeatletter and \makeatother) can be really helpful
when you want to expose some guts but also want to keep folks from using
them accidentally.


Haskell officially supports unicode in identifiers, right? Why not
pick some obscure and little-used symbol and leave the ones that are
conveniently placed on standard keyboards for normal use?


That's doable, and no less portable than -XMagicHash already is.


I suggest U+2621.


I'm not sure I'd've ever recognized a funny 'z' as "caution sign"... :)

--
Live well,
~wren
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-29 Thread Bas van Dijk
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Ben Millwood  wrote:
> Personally I think function composition is what Haskell is all about
> and it is absolutely essential that the syntax for it be lightweight.
> If we think using . as qualification as well as composition is
> confusing, I'm much more inclined to say using it as qualification was
> a mistake.

Agreed. However for function composition I often use ∘ from:

http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base-unicode-symbols/0.2.1.1/doc/html/Data-Function-Unicode.html

Bas
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-29 Thread C. McCann
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 7:54 PM, wren ng thornton  wrote:
> I'm sort of torn on this issue. On the one hand (#) has great potential as
> an operator, on the other hand I've found that having something like
> -XMagicHash (or TeX's \makeatletter and \makeatother) can be really helpful
> when you want to expose some guts but also want to keep folks from using
> them accidentally.

Haskell officially supports unicode in identifiers, right? Why not
pick some obscure and little-used symbol and leave the ones that are
conveniently placed on standard keyboards for normal use?

I suggest U+2621.

- C.
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-29 Thread wren ng thornton

On 10/29/10 11:18 AM, Daniel Peebles wrote:

Speaking of MagicHash, is it really necessary to take an operator with
"potential" like (#) just to keep primitive symbols separate from the rest?
At least from my 2010 Haskell learner perspective, it seems odd to create a
whole language extension/lexical change just for that purpose.


I'm sort of torn on this issue. On the one hand (#) has great potential 
as an operator, on the other hand I've found that having something like 
-XMagicHash (or TeX's \makeatletter and \makeatother) can be really 
helpful when you want to expose some guts but also want to keep folks 
from using them accidentally.


For example, I use a lot of newtypes to enforce various well-formedness 
constraints (a la weak-sigma types in dependently typed languages). 
Thus, I'll often define things like


netwype Foo = Foo# Bar

and then have a smart constructor (toFoo :: Bar -> Maybe Foo) which 
verifies whatever invariant.


Sometimes we may be forced to export Foo# in case other modules need to 
look inside in order to create new class instances or the like, but we 
don't want people using it in general since that'd violate the semantics 
of the type Foo. And Foo# is much nicer to type than UnsafeFoo[1]. Since 
it uses the MagicHash syntax, we can ensure that noone will use it 
blithely since they must first enable an extension to eliminate the 
syntax error.


So you can make some nice lemonade from those lemons, but I'm not sure 
whether the lemonade is really worth eliminating every other citrus 
fruit (most of which are quite tasty).



[1] In addition to toFoo, I'll often export a smart constructor 
(unsafeToFoo :: Bar -> Foo) which will still test the invariants but 
throws an error instead of returning Nothing. The primary use of 
unsafeToFoo is to get consistent error messages when someone's going to 
be throwing the Maybe away anyways. Conversely, allowing them to use 
Foo# gives the same type as unsafeToFoo, but allows circumventing the 
invariant checking as a performance optimization.


--
Live well,
~wren
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-29 Thread Daniel Peebles
Speaking of MagicHash, is it really necessary to take an operator with
"potential" like (#) just to keep primitive symbols separate from the rest?
At least from my 2010 Haskell learner perspective, it seems odd to create a
whole language extension/lexical change just for that purpose.

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 10:20 PM, wren ng thornton wrote:

> On 10/28/10 10:42 AM, Ben Millwood wrote:
>
>> Here's the wiki page:
>> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/CompositionAsDot
>>
>> Personally I think function composition is what Haskell is all about
>> and it is absolutely essential that the syntax for it be lightweight.
>> If we think using . as qualification as well as composition is
>> confusing, I'm much more inclined to say using it as qualification was
>> a mistake.
>>
>> The comment on the wiki page about $ being more common in reality is
>> not even close to true for my own code, and I don't think I'm unusual
>> in that regard.
>>
>
> Agreed on both counts. Personally, I'd much rather have name qualification
> and record selection use a different character than to remove (.) as
> composition. And replacing (.) with some abomination like `o` is
> unthinkable.
>
> As for the selector character, I'm partial to # but that would clash with
> MagicHash.
>
> --
> Live well,
> ~wren
>
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-28 Thread wren ng thornton

On 10/28/10 10:42 AM, Ben Millwood wrote:

Here's the wiki page:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/CompositionAsDot

Personally I think function composition is what Haskell is all about
and it is absolutely essential that the syntax for it be lightweight.
If we think using . as qualification as well as composition is
confusing, I'm much more inclined to say using it as qualification was
a mistake.

The comment on the wiki page about $ being more common in reality is
not even close to true for my own code, and I don't think I'm unusual
in that regard.


Agreed on both counts. Personally, I'd much rather have name 
qualification and record selection use a different character than to 
remove (.) as composition. And replacing (.) with some abomination like 
`o` is unthinkable.


As for the selector character, I'm partial to # but that would clash 
with MagicHash.


--
Live well,
~wren
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-28 Thread Ben Millwood
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:12 AM, John Smith  wrote:
> On 28/10/2010 10:15, Alexander Kjeldaas wrote:
>>
>> Hi haskellers.
>>
>> Reading through the Haskell Prime suggestions, one that caught my eye is
>> the CompositionAsDot issue.
>>
>> I'm especially thinking of the Pro issue:
>> * Paves the way for using . as the selection operator in improved record
>> or module systems
>>

Here's the wiki page:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/CompositionAsDot

Personally I think function composition is what Haskell is all about
and it is absolutely essential that the syntax for it be lightweight.
If we think using . as qualification as well as composition is
confusing, I'm much more inclined to say using it as qualification was
a mistake.

The comment on the wiki page about $ being more common in reality is
not even close to true for my own code, and I don't think I'm unusual
in that regard.
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[Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

2010-10-28 Thread John Smith

On 28/10/2010 10:15, Alexander Kjeldaas wrote:


Hi haskellers.

Reading through the Haskell Prime suggestions, one that caught my eye is the 
CompositionAsDot issue.

I'm especially thinking of the Pro issue:
* Paves the way for using . as the selection operator in improved record or 
module systems

I think I recognize this issue from common lisp.  Basically the code becomes 
verbose because accessor functions usually
need to redundantly encode the name of the module or struct in its name.  The 
alternative is to require users to import
qualified, and that doesn't deal with the occasional intra-module collision.

This is a typical large-software-system issue and it annoys me a little that 
Haskell seems to have inherited the
problems from common lisp.

I worry that in large systems, a very conservative coding standard is needed 
with quite verbose naming conventions as
that's the only safe way to avoid these conflicts in a large system while 
allowing refactoring code etc.

What is the current thinking on this issue?

Thanks,
Alexander


TypeDirectedNameResolution would solve the problem you describe, and make Haskell a lot more suitable for real-world 
development (which is usually large-software-system, or at least must be capable of scaling to one).


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