caml-list - the Caml user's mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: "Petter A. Urkedal" <paurkedal@gmail.com>
To: caml users <caml-list@inria.fr>
Subject: [Caml-list] Terser ppx syntax for common usage (like monads)
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2015 15:48:09 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CALa9pHQAfTjbQ-adr29QYoEtT=zgEywa9+btSuWRFc==w-giHQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)

Now that we're replacing camlp4 with ppx, we're also replacing e.g.

  lwt x = ....

the longer

  let%lwt x = ...

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but the monad bind operation
tends to be quite invasive, so I'd like to suggest adding a shorter
syntax which the user could choose to map to their most pervasive ppx
rewriter.  I think a good candidate would be

  let* x = ...
  for* x = ... do ... done
  try* ...
  etc.

One way to implement this would be to map kw* to kw%ast, and leave it
to the ppx extensions to accept an option telling it whether to
process "ast" tagged nodes or not. Alternatively, it could be a
compiler option.

My reason for choosing "*" is 1) it looks okay in my opinion, 2) it is
only used as a binary operator, so it can't interfere with existing
code, like e.g. "let!" could.

             reply	other threads:[~2015-10-10 13:48 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-10-10 13:48 Petter A. Urkedal [this message]
2015-10-10 13:57 ` Petter A. Urkedal
2015-10-10 14:09 ` Daniel Bünzli
2015-10-10 17:32   ` Petter A. Urkedal

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to='CALa9pHQAfTjbQ-adr29QYoEtT=zgEywa9+btSuWRFc==w-giHQ@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=paurkedal@gmail.com \
    --cc=caml-list@inria.fr \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).