Proposal: ArgumentDo

[Henrik Nilsson]

Hi all,

On 07/09/2016 08:09 AM, C Maeder wrote:
> The asymmetry that you mention is already apparent for (Haskell98) infix
> expressions, i.e. when "composing" lambda- or if-expression:
>
>   (if c then f else g) . \ x -> h x
>
> Parentheses around the last argument of "." do not matter, but
> parentheses around the first argument make a real difference

But that has to do with how grammatical ambiguity related to
in this case "if" and "lambda" are resolved by letting
the constructs extend as far as possible to the right.

This the standard way of resolving that kind of ambiguity
across a very wide range of programming languages and parsing
tools (e.g. preferring shift over reduce in an LR parser).
(And also in principle how lexical ambiguities are typically
resolved, sometimes referred to as the "maximal munch rule".)

In contrast, the present proposal suggests treating
different argument positions in grammatically
different ways (different non-terminals). As far as I know,
that is unprecedented. And in any case, it manifestly
complicates the grammar (more non-terminals) and as
a consequence adds another grammatical hurdle to
learning the language.

I think we often tend to forget just how exotic
Haskell syntax can be to the uninitiated. Which is
the vast majority of the rest of the programmer world
as well as beginners. Only the other week I gave a
presentation to a group of highly skilled developers
at a tech-savvy London-based company. The emphasis of
the talk was not at all on Haskell as such, but small
Haskell fragments did feature here and there, which I
(naively) thought would be mostly self explanatory.
Well, let's just say I was wrong.

Now, we can't make Haskell syntax less exotic (not that I'd
advocate that: I think basic Haskell syntax for the most part
strikes a pretty good balance on a number of counts), but we can
certainly avoid making it even more complicated and exotic.
Which the present proposal would, in my opinion.

Best,

/Henrik

-- 
Henrik Nilsson
School of Computer Science
The University of Nottingham
nhn at cs.nott.ac.uk




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