Composition operator [was: Re: Records in Haskell]

[Brandon Allbery]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 17:33, Donn Cave <donn at avvanta.com> wrote:

> Quoth Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com>,
> > On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 17:14, Donn Cave <donn at avvanta.com> wrote:
> >> "Spaces or unicode" would be the worst idea yet, but hopefully that
> >> isn't what you meant.
> >
> > Thing is, I think the spaces idea is considered acceptable because it's
> > *already there*.  Take a look at how GHC decides whether (.) is the
> > composition operator or a module qualification.
>
> ... what is the rationale for an additional unicode dot?
>
> That's why I more or less assume that wasn't what he meant, that
> both " . " and "<unicode dot>" would be supported at the same time
> for composition, but rather just that one or the other would be
> chosen.


Seems obvious to me:  on the one hand, there should be a plain-ASCII
version of any Unicode symbol; on the other, the ASCII version has
shortcomings the Unicode one doesn't (namely the existing conflict between
use as composition and use as module and now record qualifier).  So, the
Unicode one requires support but avoids weird parse issues.

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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