From: Markus <markus@...>
Date: 2004-10-09T04:22:20+09:00
Subject: Re: ANN: Free-form-operators patch

On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 12:17, Jason Voegele wrote:
> Markus said:
> > On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 11:44, gabriele renzi wrote:
> >> I like the idea of free form operators and actually I'd like even
> >> prefix  freeform ops, if this patch allow them :)
> >
> > Not yet.  I can see how to do it, but haven't quite finished thinking
> > through the details.  I'd also like to have some way to control the
> > precedence/associativity/arity, but I haven't figured out a way to do it
> > that I'm sure could be made consistent.
> 
> FYI, Eiffel has user-defined prefix and infix operators.  The language
> rule is that all user-defined operators have a higher precedence than
> built-in operators.  The built-in operators follow typical precedence
> rules.

    Yes, that was part of my inspiration for this.  In theory it is
simple; in practice (especially since I don't know C) the devil has been
in the details.  Specifically, Eiffel doesn't execute
definitions/declarations, while ruby does.  This makes life more
interesting.

     -- Markus