[Haskell-cafe] Why is $ right associative instead of leftassociative?

[Brian Hulley]

Tomasz Zielonka wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 01:10:24PM -0000, Brian Hulley wrote:
>> 2) Use "," instead of ";" in the block syntax so that all brace
>> blocks can be replaced by layout if desired (including record blocks)
>
> Wouldn't it be better to use ; instead of , also for record syntax?

I thought of this also, but the nice thing about using commas everywhere is 
that it is consistent with tuples and lists:

    [a,b,c]
    (a,b,c)
    {a,b,c}

I admit it takes some getting used to to write:

    map f (h;t) = f h;map f t

but you couldn't use commas in tuple syntax if they were also used as list 
cons.

Also, I'm using

    test :{Eq a, Show a} a -> ()

instead of

    test :: (Eq a, Show a) => a->()

and the comma here is particularly nice because it suggests a set, which is 
exactly what the context is.

Regards, Brian.