[Haskell-cafe] Fractional/negative fixity?

[David House]

On 07/11/06, Jon Fairbairn <jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> I must say though, that I don't like the reasoning that we
> can put in fractional fixities because it's a small
> change. The way to hell is through a series of small
> steps. If using integers to express fixities is a bit of a
> hack, switching to rational numbers is a hack on top of a
> hack.

Well, It's a _conceptually_ simple idea, one that doesn't make
understanding the language much harder.

Also, it provides an infinite space for fixities. I think the problem
'binds tighter than X but not as tight as Y', where X and Y are only
fixity integer apart is somewhat common, and this would fix it. It
would allow for extensibility into the future, where the operator
space will only become more dense, and maintaining a complete order
with only 10 integers to play will become more and more difficult.
Allowing an infinite amount of operators to come between any two
operators sounds like a solid design decision to me.

-- 
-David House, dmhouse at gmail.com