Proposal: Dot as Postfix Function Apply

[Dominique Devriese]

+1

I'm convinced that this proposed extension would be extremely natural
and practical if we give it a chance.  The fact that it may conflict
with previous, less natural syntax choices (lens composition with .
comes to mind) should not be counted against an opt-in extension.
Lens packages could easily provide an alternative notation for their .
for when the extension is enabled.

Regards,
Dominique

2015-11-04 11:44 GMT+01:00 Jeremy <voldermort at hotmail.com>:
> Dot as Postfix Function Apply
> (https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/DeclaredOverloadedRecordFields/DotPostfix)
> was originally part of ORF, but dropped to keep the scope/discussion more
> manageable. Now that ORF is in for GHC 8.0, I would like to re-propose dot
> postfix syntax.
>
> The idea is that instead of
>
> (title person) ++ " " ++ (firstName person) ++ " " ++ (lastName person)
>
> we could have
>
> person.title ++ " " ++ person.firstName ++ " " ++ person.lastName
>
> This is a simple source-to-source translation with no changes to the type
> system (TDNR is an orthogonal proposal). The advantages are:
>
>   1. Code that's easier to read/write.
>   2. Familiar to users of almost every other programming language.
>   3. IDE auto-complete - an IDE can suggest functions applicable to the
> variable after typing .
>
> This would be an opt-in extension.
>
> I'm posting this to the libraries list because that's where proposals
> generally go, although this isn't strictly a library issue. If it should be
> on a different list I'll move it.
>
>
>
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