Proposal: Add (&) to Data.Function

[Andreas Abel]

I strongly support to have a standard, succinct notation for 
arg-fun-application.  Here are my two reservations about your proposal:

1. First, I think there should be a type class of functions, such that 
the application operator can be overloaded.  (Should also happen for $).

2. (&) just has a too strong connotation of conjunction to stand for 
application.  ML has (|>) which also looks a bit similar to (>>=), see, e.g.

http://isabelle.in.tum.de/repos/isabelle/file/Isabelle2011-1/src/Pure/General/basics.ML

Andreas

On 20.11.2012 17:59, Yitzchak Gale wrote:
>   It is a common idiom to write a sequence of composed combinators in
>   reverse order to the way they would be written with ($) or (.). That
>   naturally expresses the idea of the combinators as operations being
>   applied in the given order.
>
>   This comes up so often, and is commonly used so many times in a single
>   expression, that Control.Arrow.>>> is far too wordy, and even a two-
>   character operator is awkward.
>
>   Surprisingly, until recently the operator (&) was still not used in any
>   of the popular libraries, and its name naturally expresses the idea we are
>   looking for. This operator has now been defined in the lens package. We
>   hereby propose to move it to its natural home for more general use,
>   Data.Function.
>
>   As in the lens package, we define the operator as a flipped version of
>   ($), but with slightly higher precedence for better interaction with
>   ($), and with left associativity. This definition has already proven
>   useful and convenient even in the presence of the large  and varied corpus
>   of combinators and operators in the lens package. (There it was formerly
>   known as (%), but that clashed with the usual meaning of (%) from
>   Data.Ratio.)
>
>   infixl 1 &
>   (&) :: a -> (a -> b) -> b
>   a & f = f a
>   {-# INLINE (&) #-}
>
> Discussion period: 2 weeks
>
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/7434
>
> Thanks,
> Yitz
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Libraries mailing list
> Libraries at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
>


-- 
Andreas Abel  <><      Du bist der geliebte Mensch.

Theoretical Computer Science, University of Munich
Oettingenstr. 67, D-80538 Munich, GERMANY

andreas.abel at ifi.lmu.de
http://www2.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~abel/