[Haskell-cafe] (A little humour)

[Dan Piponi]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Dan Piponi <dpiponi at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the proposed notation, within [[]]'s there is an implied <*> for every space.

Come to think of it, surely that's why they're called *applicative*
functors. In Haskell, a space between identifiers corresponds
implicitly to the 'application' operator. (Sometimes it's written
explicitly as @, as in
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.54.6644).
Applicative functors are simply a mechanism to allow the redefinition
of application, just like how monads allow you to 'redefine' the
semicolon.
--
Dan