user-defined operators

Thomas Lindgren thomasl_erlang@REDACTED
Sun Mar 21 18:06:56 CET 2004


Some time ago there was interest in extending Erlang
with your own operators, e.g., !!. So why not provide
them?

Here is a code sketch for extending Erlang to permit
simple user-defined infix operators `op`. The idea is
basically taken from Haskell and seems fairly clean. I
used backquotes around the operator because Haskell
did so.

I modified the erlang parser and scanner to support
this notation; it seems to work, though I haven't used
it very extensively. 

f(X, Y) -> X `foo` Y.   %% note: foo is "backquoted"

is parsed as if:

f(X,Y) -> 'foo'(X,Y).   %% call function foo/2

The operator `op` has the same precedence as
andalso/orelse. You can also write `mod:func` to
invoke mod:func(X,Y), e.g.,

   Port `erlang:port_command` Data

Both the module and the function have to be non-empty
atoms. Thus, the following are considered errors,
where foo is any atom:
`:foo` 
`foo:` 
`:`  
``

I haven't tested how the scanner behaves with extreme
quoting in the infix operator. The error return value
in the scanner does not have a format_error. Finally,
the code could probably be improved by someone more
familiar with erl_scan/erl_parse.

Example use:
==========
1> {ok, Ts, _} = erl_scan2:string("f(X,Y) -> X `op`
Y.").
...
2> erl2:parse_form(Ts).
...

Best,
Thomas

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