[Haskell-cafe] If you'd design a Haskell-like language, what would you do different?

[Brandon Allbery]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 21:05, Andrew Cowie
<andrew at operationaldynamics.com>wrote:

> Now we just need λ to replace \, → to replace ->, and ≠ to replace /=
> (which still looks like division assignment no matter how hard I squint
> my eyes. 25 years of C and C derived languages is hard to forget).
>

Some of it is already supported.
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/syntax-extns.html#unicode-syntax

(≠ isn't in that list, but it doesn't need to be; just stick it in the
Prelude if it's not there already, since it's not special syntax, it's just
another operator.  The * *is* a special case, I suspect, though:  I bet
it's only supported in kinds, not as the multiplication operator.)

The problem with λ is that it's a perfectly valid Unicode lowercase letter.
 There is 𝛌
MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL LAMDA U+1D6CC but font support is often lacking,
and it looks like Unicode categorizes *that* also as a lowercase letter.
 If you can convince the Unicode Consortium to add a lambda that is of
class symbol, Haskell can then make use of it — once there are fonts that
support it.  (And then we'll have to deal with folks trying to use the
letter, because everyone knows the Roman alphabet is the only one that
matters and of *course* Greek letters are symbol characters....  Pfeh.)

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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