[Haskell-cafe] Why are field selectors functions?

[Jon Fairbairn]

AntC <anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz> writes:

> No! This isn't more bikeshedding about notation.
>
> It's a bit of Haskell archaeology.
>
>> On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 2:59 AM, Judah Jacobson wrote:
> [This isn't exactly what Judah wrote.]
>> ...
>>
>> Instead of `x f` (to access field x of record f),
>> maybe we could write `f{x}` as the record selection.  
>>
>
> The more I thought about that ...
>
> We use { ... } to declare records, build them, update them.
> We use { ... } in pattern matching to access named fields.
>
> Why don't we use { ... } to access named fields in terms?
>
> The syntax `e{ foo }` is unused in H98. (Or at least it was in 1998.)
> Can someone who was there at the time (1994?, TRex?)
> remember if that was ever considered?

No one else has answered (at least in café), but perhaps the
reason is that like me they can’t really remember! I do remember
that since Haskell is a functional language we wanted as many
things to be functions as possible; we did want to be able to
pass field selectors around as arguments to other functions.

I vaguely remember suggesting some years later that we should
have {…} being a function, so that {field} is a field selector
and {field=value} is a field setter (and requiring that you had
to write use normal function application: “{field} structure” to
select field from structure). SimonPJ gave a reason why not, and
I’m sure it will be possible to search out what he said.

-- 
Jón Fairbairn                                 Jon.Fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk