Fractional/negative fixity?

[Jan-Willem Maessen]

On Nov 7, 2006, at 5:49 PM, Robert Dockins wrote:
[On operator precedence]
>
>
> Ha! Well, as long as we're being pedantic, surely we wouldn't need  
> any set
> larger than the rationals (which does have a decidable ordering)?
>
> Also, since I'm commenting anyway, I rather like the idea of  
> specifying
> operator precedences via a partial order.  However, I also feel  
> that there
> needs to be some work done to make sure there aren't gremlins  
> hiding in the
> details.  Has anyone worked out the theory on this?  How does  
> associating to
> the right vs left play into the picture?  How does it fit into the  
> parsing
> technology?

Actually, we *do* use a DAG on operator precedence in the Fortress  
programming language (my day job).  Our goal is to require  
parentheses when it is not blatantly obvious what is going on (eg  
because we're using operators from two libraries written in  
isolation).  We can only use operators together in an expression  
without parentheses if there is an edge between them in the graph.   
Graph nodes are sets of operators with the "same" precedence (eg  
addition and subtraction).  Among other things this means that if ++  
has higher precedence than ==, and == has higher precedence than &&,  
we can't necessarily mix ++ and && in the same expression without  
parentheses.

That said, this would be a pretty big change for Haskell, and would  
break existing code unless you somehow wired in the transitive  
closure of all the existing operators.  As another message in this  
discussion (from Simon M?) mentioned, you might want to be able to  
specify the relationship between operators imported from different  
modules, because you *do* know that a well-known relationship exists.

-Jan-Willem Maessen

>
>
>
> -- 
> Rob Dockins
>
> Talk softly and drive a Sherman tank.
> Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank.
>        -- TMBG
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