argument order of functions in Data.Bits

[Henning Thielemann]

On Thu, 7 Apr 2005, Malcolm Wallace wrote:

> "Simon Marlow" <simonmar at microsoft.com> writes:
>
>>>    shiftL 2 . clearBit 7 . setBit 4 . setBit 1
>>>
>>> instead of
>>>    flip shiftL 2 . flip clearBit 7 . flip setBit 4 . flip setBit 1
>>>
>>> or
>>>    (`shiftL` 2) . (`clearBit` 7) . (`setBit` 4) . (`setBit` 1)
>>
>> On the whole I agree, but I'm inclined against changing this because it
>> would break so much code gratuitously.  I vote for just putting this
>> down to a small mistake in the original design, and leaving it.  If
>> there's overwhelming support for the change of course we'll make it, but
>> I doubt there will be.
>
> For what it's worth, the old library NHC.Bits
>    http://cvs.haskell.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/nhc98/src/prelude/Bit/Bit.hs
> implements the 'set' and 'clear' operations with arguments the natural
> way round, although the left and right shift have the same order as
> Data.Bits and the C language.

If both infix operators and alphanumeric function names exist, then one 
could use different orders as it is done for 'subtract' and '(-)'.

>  I slightly prefer the NHC names ^>>
> and ^<< for shifting too, since they are naturally infix.  Henning's
> example composition would look like this:
>
>       (^<< 2) . clear 7 . set 4 . set 1

Indeed, removing the 'Bit' suffix from the bit functions would also be 
nice. That would promote the use of qualification, that is Bit.clear, 
Bit.set and so on.