4 ms·

foo(x, -y) is not the same as foo(x -y) (from your last sentence, I assume you were talking about JS in general, not just JSON)

by sjrd 9y ago

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Mm, fair point. Infix math rears its ugly head again. I've been living in Lisp a bit too long. Never mind. Actually, let's double down: Instead of writing 1+2, you should really be writing +(1 2). Don't you see how much easier that would make things? A single, uniform syntax everywhere! + is just a function that gets called like anything else! Your foo(x -y) example would become foo(x -(y)). I'm mostly joking.
- dasmoth 9y ago
  Haskell makes a reasonable job of combining infix operators with no commas between function arguments[1]. You sometimes end up with a few extra parentheses and $s instead, but things generally seem to work out. Does use commas for lists and tuples, though. The latter kind-of make sense, it's the commas that identify the expression as a tuple. Not sure what the rationale for commas in lists is, though. [1] Slightly complicated by currying (arguably, it's several successive function applications rather than one multi-arg application) but the end result is the same...
  - tromp 9y ago
    > Not sure what the rationale for commas in lists is, though. Well, you need some separator, and spaces won't do since [x y] has x applied to y.
    - dasmoth 9y ago
      Good point. Although could, in principle, make space-between-list-items higher precedence than function application. E.g.: [x (func y) z]
      - mrkgnao 9y ago
        But how do you write a list with only one element, x (func y) z?
        dasmoth 9y ago
        [(x (func y) z)]
- Houshalter 9y ago
  It's not infix math that's the problem, it's the ambiguity of "-". It can take two arguments in one context, or one in another (or just be a representation of a negative number without implying any function call at all.) If we just used a different symbol for subtraction, it would clear up a number of other parsing problems languages run into. Or you could just require negations to be done inside parentheses.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Or just require whitespace for binary - and no whitespace for unary. res = -x ==> negative x res = c - x ==> c minus x res = - x ==> syntax error
seanwilson 9y ago
I like OCaml's terse syntax. You can write something like that as just "foo x (-y)" (the brackets are only needed because of the use of minus but can usually be omitted).
coldtea 9y ago
Not really suggesting this, but if we only allow the unary operator - to always be stuck next to the number, and the binary operator - to always be surrounded by whitespace, it is. So: foo(x -y) => foo(x, -y) foo(x - y) => foo(x - y)

foo(x, -y) is not the same as foo(x -y) (from your last sentence, I assume you were talking about JS in general, not just JSON)

by sjrd 9y ago

foo(x, -y) is not the same as foo(x -y) (from your last sentence, I assume you were talking about JS in general, not just JSON)

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Mm, fair point. Infix math rears its ugly head again. I've been living in Lisp a bit too long. Never mind. Actually, let's double down: Instead of writing 1+2, you should really be writing +(1 2). Don't you see how much easier that would make things? A single, uniform syntax everywhere! + is just a function that gets called like anything else! Your foo(x -y) example would become foo(x -(y)). I'm mostly joking.

dasmoth 9y ago
Haskell makes a reasonable job of combining infix operators with no commas between function arguments[1]. You sometimes end up with a few extra parentheses and $s instead, but things generally seem to work out. Does use commas for lists and tuples, though. The latter kind-of make sense, it's the commas that identify the expression as a tuple. Not sure what the rationale for commas in lists is, though. [1] Slightly complicated by currying (arguably, it's several successive function applications rather than one multi-arg application) but the end result is the same...
- tromp 9y ago
  > Not sure what the rationale for commas in lists is, though. Well, you need some separator, and spaces won't do since [x y] has x applied to y.
  - dasmoth 9y ago
    Good point. Although could, in principle, make space-between-list-items higher precedence than function application. E.g.: [x (func y) z]
    - mrkgnao 9y ago
      But how do you write a list with only one element, x (func y) z?
      - dasmoth 9y ago
        [(x (func y) z)]
Houshalter 9y ago
It's not infix math that's the problem, it's the ambiguity of "-". It can take two arguments in one context, or one in another (or just be a representation of a negative number without implying any function call at all.) If we just used a different symbol for subtraction, it would clear up a number of other parsing problems languages run into. Or you could just require negations to be done inside parentheses.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Or just require whitespace for binary - and no whitespace for unary. res = -x ==> negative x res = c - x ==> c minus x res = - x ==> syntax error

seanwilson 9y ago

I like OCaml's terse syntax. You can write something like that as just "foo x (-y)" (the brackets are only needed because of the use of minus but can usually be omitted).

coldtea 9y ago

Not really suggesting this, but if we only allow the unary operator - to always be stuck next to the number, and the binary operator - to always be surrounded by whitespace, it is. So: foo(x -y) => foo(x, -y) foo(x - y) => foo(x - y)