[Haskell-cafe] Re: Allowing hyphens in identifiers

Richard O'Keefe ok at cs.otago.ac.nz
Sun Dec 13 17:13:37 EST 2009


I too thought of using NBSP as a word separator.
Unicode is replete with spaces of various widths and usages.
I suggest, however, that Haskell code does tend to require
careful reading, and that ambiguities (like the word boundaries
that baStudlyCapsMakesSoHardToLocateQuickly) that we might
tolerate in contexts where the text is fairly predictable are
far less tolerable in stuff that requires a close reading.

One of the problems with baStudlyCaps is that it can give
Stress to the wrong words.  Take takeWhile as an example.
The "while" bit is humanly recoverable because a function
follows it.  The thing that you most need to see is "take".
But it's the least informative part of the name (While)
that is stressed.

The "visible blank" U+2423 (Unicode calls it an "Open Box", but
its function is to visibly indicate a blank) might␣just␣do, but
you might as well use underscores (or hyphens).




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