[erlang-questions] My biggest beef with Erlang

[Joe Armstrong]

I think it would be easier to allow syntax transforms *before*
parse_transform. We need
character_transform that kicks in before tokenisation, and
token_transform which kicks in after character_transform but before
parse_transform.

/Joe Armstrong


On Nov 25, 2007 2:48 PM, Thomas Lindgren <thomasl_erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> --- Joel Reymont <joelr1@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Nov 25, 2007, at 3:12 AM, Robin Bhattacharyya
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Smerl manipulates erlang at the abstract form, so
> > smerl is kinda like
> > > a lisp macro.  A lispy erlang would make erlang
> > easier to manipulate.
> >
> >
> > My biggest beef with Erlang is that even with parse
> > transforms I
> > cannot make a !! b stand for funcall(a, b). If the
> > Erlang
> > implementation removed this restriction then surely
> > all sorts of
> > creative uses would be enabled.
>
> In other words, you want user-defined infix operators.
>
>
> The easy way, Haskell-style, took a couple of hours to
> implement a few years ago (recipe: modify lexer to
> recognize infix-op tokens, then add an extra rule to
> parser to handle them), but got bogged down in the
> usual bureaucracy and kibbitzing. So this time, first
> write an EEP and you're set to go.
>
> The hard way would be something like ML or Prolog full
> infix syntax (and prefix, postfix, and different
> associativities for Prolog). I think that can safely
> be left for later.
>
> Best,
> Thomas
>
>
>
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