Proposal: Dot as Postfix Function Apply

[Jeremy]

Dot as Postfix Function Apply
(https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/DeclaredOverloadedRecordFields/DotPostfix)
was originally part of ORF, but dropped to keep the scope/discussion more
manageable. Now that ORF is in for GHC 8.0, I would like to re-propose dot
postfix syntax.

The idea is that instead of

(title person) ++ " " ++ (firstName person) ++ " " ++ (lastName person)

we could have

person.title ++ " " ++ person.firstName ++ " " ++ person.lastName

This is a simple source-to-source translation with no changes to the type
system (TDNR is an orthogonal proposal). The advantages are:

  1. Code that's easier to read/write.
  2. Familiar to users of almost every other programming language.
  3. IDE auto-complete - an IDE can suggest functions applicable to the
variable after typing .

This would be an opt-in extension.

I'm posting this to the libraries list because that's where proposals
generally go, although this isn't strictly a library issue. If it should be
on a different list I'll move it.



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