deep record update

[Barney Hilken]

All this talk about records got me thinking. I don't really like the current syntax for record update (because it looks too much like function application) but here is an extension to it which might be useful.

If you use nested records, many languages allow you to update the inner records directly, for example rect.bottomLeft.xCoord += 3. We could allow a similar thing in Haskell by extending the syntax like this:

fbind	->	qvar = exp
		|	qvar { fbind1 , ... , fbindn }

then

	rec { l1 { l2 = x }}

would mean

	rec { l1 = (l1 rec) { l2 = x }}

The advantage (apart from convenience) is that we don't have to repeat rec, which could be a complex expression.

Is this any use?

Barney.