[Haskell-cafe] Desugaring of infix operators is (always?) the wrong way round

Henning Thielemann lemming at henning-thielemann.de
Wed Sep 26 03:25:53 EDT 2007


On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Brian Hulley wrote:

> Jonathan Cast wrote:
>
>> Of course, this is all a consequence of the well-known failure of
>> natural language: verbs come before their objects.  It is thus natural
>> to write f(x), when in fact it is the object that should come first, not
>> the function.  Switching to a (natural) language where (finite) verbs
>> come at the end of sentences, where they belong, should fix this issue
>> in time.  Doing the same in a functional language would be ideal as
>> well, but might limit its use among those who speak inferior natural
>> languages.
>> 
> Thanks, I must look into using postfix notation. It's used in Forth and 
> Postscript and I seem to dimly recall that there is a natural language 
> somewhere that also uses it but I can't remember which one.

Reverse Polish! Ah no, it's only the Reverse Polish Notation which is in 
this style. ;-)

Yes, PostScript is nice, does also allow higher order functions and 
partial application.


More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list