[Haskell-cafe] Fractional/negative fixity?

[Nicolas Frisby]

Let's remember that if something is broke, it's only _right_ to _fix_
it. I patiently waited for someone else to make that pun.

Understanding the language won't be much harder, but understanding
fixity declarations will become a task. Consider:

infixl -1.7521  -- what and why?

As the operator space becomes more dense, negative and fractional
fixities are going to become more obfuscated. The negative and
fractional fixities will satisfy a number purposes well, but they will
also be abused and lead to confusion.

This smells like a wart growing on a wart to me.

Nick

On 11/7/06, David House <dmhouse at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
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