[Haskell-cafe] Re: Allowing hyphens in identifiers

Ketil Malde ketil at malde.org
Thu Dec 10 05:34:39 EST 2009


"Richard O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> writes:

>> You mean to parse a - b differently then a-b? You don't have the
>> problem in LISP as AFAIR you use (- a b) but in Haskell it would be a
>> problem. 

> Haskell already has this problem with ".", where we generally need

(As somebody pointed out, this is usually unambigous)

> to put spaces around "." with the meaning "composition" and not
> put spaces around other uses.

With implicit parameters, this also goes for (?).  Is anybody using that
extension still?

> It's a problem that COBOL solved a long time ago:
> 	COMPUTE INCREASED-DEBT = TOTAL-EXPENSES - AFTER-TAX-INCOME.

That we all program in COBOL these days shows how important this issue is :-)

> Given the amazinglyUglyAndUnreadably baStudlyCaps namingStyle that

I prefer underscored_words myself, but just like periods for
hierarchical modules, this is water under the bridge.  In sum, perhaps
the net effect of this convention is positive: it encourages short
variable names. 

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants


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