[bitc-dev] Syntax Poll: Polymorphic Types

[Sandro Magi]

Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> It's subjectively more readable:
>
>    char list   vs.   list [of] char.
>
> >From my perspective, the concern would be on the one hand that this
> readability may not extend gracefully to multiple type arguments (in
> OCaml these are parenthesized), but on the other that the prefix
> notation wants to look like application, and I'm not sure how that's
> going to work out (need to try it in the parser).

How are type arguments delineated? I'm not clear on how you plan to 
handle this as opposed to OCaml's "single-arg everywhere" approach.

Either of the above two approaches are perfectly readable, as long as 
you don't introduce bracketing for type arguments ala C#, ie. 
List<char>, which quickly becomes unreadable with nested types. Suppose 
you had:

type charOrStringList = (char, string) either list

The reverse looks a little more natural to me because I work with C# daily:

type charOrStringList = list either (char, string)

You unwrap this type from left to right, instead of having to check the 
end for the first type to unwrap. Still, it's been awhile since I did 
any serious OCaml programming, so that could just my bias talking.

Sandro