Re: Definable operators

fjh@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)
18 Mar 1997 13:04:24 -0500

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From: fjh@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers,comp.lang.misc
Date: 18 Mar 1997 13:04:24 -0500
Organization: Comp Sci, University of Melbourne
References: 97-03-037 97-03-051 97-03-076
Keywords: design

andy@cs.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) writes:


>Yes, I think that definiable operators are worse than poorly chosen
>value reference names. Definable operators share the "what is that?"
>property of poorly chosen names, but they also have a "what is it
>operating on?" problem.


In languages such as Haskell and Prolog, which both allow alphabetic
character sequences in operators, there is no reason why operators
need have the "what is that?" property of poorly chosen names.
And the "what is it operating on" problem is usually easily
resolved by looking at the operator declaration.


>Frankly, I see no "large" potential benefits.


Have you ever tried to write a combinator parser without using infix operators?


--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3
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