[Haskell-beginners] Offside rule for function arguments?

[Isaac Dupree]

On 08/23/10 02:33, John Smith wrote:
> Why doesn't Haskell allow something like this?
>
> fac 0 = 0
>     1 = 1
>     x = x * fac (x-1)
>
> This would be clearer than repeating the function name each time, and
> follow the same pattern as guards and case.

Layout is detected and parsed when and only when it is preceded by 
'where', 'let', 'do', or 'of'.  So Haskell would have to have some such 
keyword to indicate "let the layout begin!" -- which could make it a bit 
uglier -- but no I don't know why.  Sometimes where there are tons of 
cases I define the function using 'case' instead -- I probably wouldn't 
for your above example, but to show how it'd be written,

fac x = case x of
   0 -> 0
   1 -> 1
   _ -> x * fac (x-1)