[Haskell-cafe] Re: Unary Minus

[Benjamin L.Russell]

On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:13:09 +0200, Roel van Dijk
<vandijk.roel at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Benjamin L.Russell
><DekuDekuplex at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Interesting. ?How is this hack implemented?
>
>This seems to be the relevant grammar:
>  lexp6 -> - exp7
>  lpat6 -> - (integer | float)        (negative literal)
>
>The '6's and the '7' are superscripts.
>Perhaps the hack is in the precedence of the expression in which an
>unary minus is allowed.

Yes, I see it now.  It's under "9.5  Context-Free Syntax," instead of
being under "9.2  Lexical Syntax," so it's a syntactic rule, rather
than a lexical rule.

According to the rule, "a left-expression of precedence level 6"
consists of "'-' followed by an expression of precedence level 7", and
"a left-pattern of precedence level 6" consists of "'-' followed by
(an integer or a float)", and by definition, this is a "negative
literal."  Integers and floats, in turn, are part of the lexical
syntax.

-- Benjamin L. Russell
-- 
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