[Haskell-beginners] FW: question

[Patrick LeBoutillier]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Benjamin Edwards
<edwards.benj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Roelof,
>
> I don't want to come across as rude here, and I am sure the rest of the list
> will shoot me down if I do, but you had a number of people trying to
> diagnose a problem caused mostly by a failure on your part to type out
> correctly what you have read. You are going to find it very hard to make
> meaningful progress in your quest to learn Haskell if you don't take the
> time to at least learn the basic syntax of the language before coming to the
> mailing lists for help.

I agree, but here's something I'd like to point out:

IIRC, Roelof uses "Programming in Haskell" as his learning material.
One thing that I found confusing in that book (and in other books as
well), is that the authors insist on using LaTeX mathematical symbols
in Haskell code instead of "valid Haskell syntax". For example, in the
exact example from the book that Roelof is trying to understand:

[x^2 | x <- [1..5]]

, the caret ('^') is not a caret, it's "an arrow pointing upwards",
and the ASCII arrow  ("<-") is not an ASCII arrow composed of '<' and
'-', but instead "a single-character arrow". A table at the end of the
book (Appendix B) explains the correspondance, but that might not be
immediately obvious.

What are the benefits of having Haskell code samples (in a book
specifically about learning Haskell) not being valid Haskell syntax?
Why burden the beginner with the task of mentally translating these symbols?


Patrick

>
> Best,
> Ben
>
> On 14 Jul 2011 10:48, "Roelof Wobben" <rwobben at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hello
>
>
>
> That was the problem.
>
> When I do <- instead of <-- I see outcome.
>
> So this problem is also solved.
>
>
>
> Everyone thanks for the help and patience.
>
>
>
> Roelof
>
>
> ________________________________
>> Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:25:33 +0100
>> Subject: Re: [Haskell-beginners] FW: question
>> From: edwards.benj at gmail.com
>> To: luca_ciciriello at hotmail.com
>> CC: beginners at haskell.org; rwobben at hotmail.com
>
>>
>>
>> The first problem I see is that "x <--" is wrong... it should be just x
>> <-, a single hyph...
>
>> <luca_ciciriello at hotmail.com<mailto:luca_ciciriello at hotmail.com>>
>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi.
>> On wich system are you using GHCi ? Probably I missed this information
>> from...
>
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-- 
=====================
Patrick LeBoutillier
Rosemère, Québec, Canada