[Haskell-cafe] Lambda-case / lambda-if

[Neil Brown]

On 05/10/10 07:52, Nicolas Wu wrote:
>> I'd prefer to see something like
>>         \ 1 ->  f
>>         | 2 ->  g
>> but I'm sure something could be worked out.
>>      
> While I think the "case of"
> is a good idea, multiple clauses in lambdas seems more canonical to
> me.
>    

Alternatively, we could abandon lambdas and just use lambda-case.

All expressions like \1 -> f become case of 1 -> f

Multi-argument functions are a bit more verbose, as we effectively go 
back to single argument functions with manual currying:

\x (C y) -> z becomes: case of {x -> case of {C y -> z}}

There is the small matter of losing backwards compatibility, of course.  
But on the plus side, this would reduce the number of constructions in 
the language by one.  (I think the strictness semantics, etc match up 
for this transformation?).

;-)

Thanks,

Neil.